US Court Delays Nikhil Gupta Sentencing After Pannun Seeks to Attend Hearing
New Delhi: A US federal court has postponed the sentencing of Nikhil Gupta after prosecutors said the "intended murder victim" wants to take part in the legal proceedings, prompting the hearing to be rescheduled for November.
While court filings do not identify the victim by name, counsel for the banned Sikhs for Justice Gurpatwant Singh Pannun has publicly identified himself as the target of the alleged murder-for-hire plot.
In a letter filed before the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, prosecutors said the unnamed victim "wishes to participate in the sentencing" and requested that the September 25 hearing should be adjourned as he would be out of the country at that time.
Judge Victor Marrero granted the request, rescheduling Gupta's sentencing to November 20 at 10 am.
Gupta pleaded guilty in February to conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, murder-for-hire and money laundering conspiracy, avoiding a trial that had been scheduled for March. He faces a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison and has remained in US custody since his extradition from the Czech Republic in June 2024.
US prosecutors have alleged that Gupta acted at the direction of Vikash Yadav, whom US court filings identify as a former employee of India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), to arrange Pannun's assassination in New York. Yadav was separately indicted in October 2024 on charges including murder-for-hire and money laundering.
The Indian government subsequently acknowledged that Yadav had previously worked for the government but maintained that he was no longer employed when the US indictment was unsealed. His whereabouts in India remain unknown.
The original indictment against Gupta also referred to the June 2023 killing of Khalistani separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada. Prosecutors alleged that, a day after Nijjar's killing, Gupta told the undercover US law enforcement officer posing as a hitman that Nijjar "was also the target” and that there was "now no need to wait" before carrying out the planned assassination of the intended victim. The indictment also alleged that around the same time, Vikash Yadav sent Gupta a news article about the intended victim and told him, "It's [a] priority now."
Last month, however, US authorities unsealed a separate indictment charging jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi and several alleged associates with conspiring to murder Nijjar in Canada. Unlike the Gupta and Yadav indictments, the Bishnoi indictment does not allege that officials of the Government of India directed or participated in the conspiracy, instead attributing the operation to Bishnoi's transnational criminal organisation.
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