Balpreet Singh
November 30, 2023

Yesterday, in the Southern District of New York, a superseding indictment was unsealed which revealed murder-for-hire charges against Indian national Nikhil Gupta.  Gupta was arrested and detained on June 30, 2023 in the Czech Republic as he was traveling from India to the US.

Gupta is alleged to have directed a plot to target a Sikh activist in the US along with an Indian government employee (“CC-1”) and other actors in India.  The victim has been confirmed to be Sikhs For Justice attorney Gurpatwant Pannun. Sikhs for Justice is organizing the Khalistan Referendum.

Gupta worked with CC-1 who is an agent of the Government of India and a self-described “Senior Field Officer”.  CC-1 was working with a team of other individuals in India who appeared on one occasion during a video, sitting around a conference table dressed in business attire.  Gupta was told that a criminal case against him in India would be “taken care of” in return for his cooperation.

While the unsealed US indictment contains many explosive revelations about the operations of the Government of India in the US and the targeting of the Sikh victim there, it also reveals connections to the Government of India’s operations in Canada and the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

In a call with a man Gupta thought was a criminal associate (“CS”) but was in fact a confidential source working with US law enforcement, Gupta stated on June 12, 2023, that there was a “big target” in Canada and that “we will be needing one good team in Canada also, [t]omorrow I will share you the details”. This would be shortly before Nijjar’s assassination on June 18, 2023.

CC-1 sent Gupta a video clip showing the dead body of Hardeep Singh Nijjar slumped in his vehicle the same day as the murder, on June 18, 2023.  Gupta would tell an undercover US agent (“UC”), who he had thought was a hitman introduced via CS, that Nijjar was “also the target” and that “we have so many targets.”

Gupta would go on reveal that Nijjar was “#4, #3 on the list” and said once again “we have so many targets, we have so many targets.”

Gupta revealed to CS that before the 29th of June “we have to finish four jobs” which included the US victim and “three in Canada”.

While Gupta has been arrested, the full extent of the network that worked with him, including those in India, remains to be revealed.  It is clear that this network has ties to the Nijjar case.

It appears, from the indictment, that the Government of India is using similar criminal elements to target Sikhs in Canada and providing them with directions, logistics and money.

The Government of India’s nexus with criminal gangs is an alarming revelation from today’s indictment.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau provided comments to the media regarding the US indictment. He shared that Canada has been working with the US and other foreign governments “from the month of August” onwards in dealing with Indian transnational repression. He continues to call on India to take these allegations seriously and cooperate with Canadian authorities.

Canadian investigations are ongoing as it becomes clear that India is not only engaging in violent destabilizing foreign interference and attacking the sovereignty of democratic countries, but it is also financing and supporting gangs in Canada and the US to kill citizens of other nations.

Balpreet Singh hails from Toronto, Canada, and is the spokesperson and legal counsel for the World Sikh Organization of Canada.