A day after The Washington Post named an official of India’s spy agency for plotting the killing of a U.S.-based Sikh separatist leader, the Indian government on Tuesday dismissed the media report, calling it an “unwarranted and unsubstantiated” accusation.
The Post report said U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that the plan to hire a hit team to assassinate Sikh activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun — which was ultimately thwarted by U.S. authorities — was approved by Samant Goel, the chief of the Indian spy agency Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, at the time.
Vikram Yadav, a RAW officer — who was linked to the killing of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada in June [2023] — handled the plan to kill Pannun and gave instructions to a hired assassin, said the report — which the Post said was based on interviews with more than three dozen current and former senior security officials in Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany, India and the United States.
“The report in question makes unwarranted and unsubstantiated imputations on a serious matter,” Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Tuesday in a response to media queries, after the Post report was published.
“There is an ongoing investigation of the high-level committee set up by the government of India to look into the security concerns shared by the U.S. government on networks of organized criminals, terrorists, and others’ speculative and irresponsible comments on it are not helpful,” he said.
‘Credible allegations’
Accusations of RAW involvement in killings on foreign soil first surfaced in September when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada was “actively pursuing credible allegations” that Indian agents were potentially linked to the killing of Nijjar, a Canadian citizen.
Nijjar was shot dead in his car by two masked gunmen outside a Sikh gurdwara (place of worship) in British Columbia. India had designated him a terrorist in 2020.
India promptly rejected Trudeau’s allegations as “absurd and motivated” amid mounting tensions between the two countries.
India’s foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, said at that time it was “not the government of India’s policy” to engage in acts such as the killing of Nijjar.
In November, a senior Biden administration official said the United States had thwarted a plot to kill Sikh separatist leader Pannun while announcing charges against an Indian man accused of orchestrating the attempted murder.
U.S. authorities raised the issue with officials at the highest level in New Delhi, expressing concerns that the Indian government was involved in it, a statement from the White House said November 22.
This past Monday, the White House said that it considered the reported role of the Indian spying agency in the assassination plots in Canada and the U.S. as a "serious matter," with spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre telling reporters, “We’re taking that very, very seriously. We’re going to continue to raise our concerns.”
India has designated Pannun as a terrorist for his alleged involvement in the Sikh separatist movement demanding that an independent state of Khalistan be carved out of India.
‘Rogue operatives’
In March, quoting unidentified Indian security officials, the New York-based news agency Bloomberg reported that a “high-level” Indian investigative committee had found some “rogue operatives not authorized by the government” were involved in the alleged plot to kill Pannun.
The committee was set up after the U.S. Department of Justice in November indicted Nikhil Gupta, an Indian gunrunner, on charges of trying to orchestrate the assassination, allegedly on the instructions of a RAW agent. It has not yet made its findings public.
Monday’s Post report, headlined “An assassination plot on American soil reveals a darker side of Modi’s India,” aid Indian RAW operative Yadav’s identity and affiliation, which had not previously been reported, provide the “most explicit evidence to date” that the assassination plan “was directed from within the Indian spy service.”
According to several current and former U.S. and Indian security officials, RAW agent Yadav forwarded details about Pannun, including his New York address, to the would-be assassins and wrote that the assassination was a “priority now,” the Post report said.
As soon as the would-be assassins could confirm that Pannun, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada, was home, “it will be a go-ahead from us,” the Post quoted Yadav as saying.
Senior Indian officials named in the Post report and accused of being aware of the RAW operation in the United States did not respond to it, the newspaper said.
India dismisses allegations
Although India dismisses the allegations that it tried to assassinate Pannun, it recently indicated that it would pursue terrorists on foreign soil.
On April 5, Defense Minister Rajnath Singh told an Indian TV channel that India knows how to track down terrorists who target the country.
“If any terrorist from our neighboring country tries to create disturbance and indulge in terrorist activities in India, we will give a strong and fitting reply. If he runs away to Pakistan, we will enter that country and kill him there,” Singh told the interviewer.
Singh spoke to the channel a day after The Guardian reported that RAW had been behind the killing of around 20 people in Pakistan since 2020.
Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Washington-based Wilson Center, said that India has neither completely denied involvement in the Pannun assassination plot nor outright acknowledged responsibility for the assassinations in Pakistan.
“But certainly, its public messaging has signaled more comfort with being associated with the hits in Pakistan than the alleged plot in the U.S.,” Kugelman told VOA. “The plot targeting Pannun happened in the U.S., on the soil of a close partner. So there is some risk for India if its complicity is established.”
He added that India would be “perfectly comfortable” to be linked to the hits in Pakistan, “given that Pakistan is a bitter rival and India is always looking to project strength against Pakistan.”
“In effect, India’s interests are better served being linked to the killings in Pakistan than to the alleged plot in the U.S.,” he said.
Editor's note: This article has been updated to clarify Pannun's citizenship status.
