Nikhil Gupta's testimony can haunt India's intelligence establishment

Nikhil Gupta’s cooperation could link the Pannun conspiracy in the US with Nijjar’s murder in Canada

Is Nikhil Gupta expected to testify as a prosecution witness in the Hardeep Singh Nijjar murder case in Canada, where the trial is scheduled to begin in August?

Gupta has pleaded guilty to all three charges in the Gurpatwant Singh Pannun case — murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. A United States court has recently accepted his guilty plea, and he now awaits sentencing, which is scheduled to be held on May 29. The US court documents say Gupta was acting at the behest of Vikash Yadav, an officer of the Indian external intelligence agency Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW). New Delhi has described Yadav as a rogue officer.

In May 2024, Canadian authorities arrested four people — 22-year-old Karan Brar, 22-year-old Kamalpreet Singh, 28-year-old Karanpreet Singh, and 22-year-old Amandeep Singh — for the 2023 murder of Khalistani separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. They are facing charges of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

Canadian authorities have long held that the conspiracy to murder Pannun in the United States and the killing of Nijjar are inter-connected.

“On or about June 18, 2023, approximately two days before the Indian Prime Minister’s state visit to the United States, masked gunmen murdered Hardeep Singh Nijjar outside a Sikh temple in British Columbia, Canada. Nijjar was an associate of the Victim (Pannun), and, like the Victim, was a leader of the Sikh separatist movement and an outspoken critic of the Indian government. On or about June 19, 2023, the day after the Nijjar murder, GUPTA told the UC (undercover officer of the Drug Enforcement Administration) that Nijjar “was also the target” and “we have so many targets.” Gupta added that, in light of Nijjar’s murder, there was “now no need to wait” on killing the Victim,” stated the press release issued by the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, which is prosecuting Gupta.

From this, it is evident that Gupta knew the plot to assassinate Nijjar, though the extent of his involvement in the Nijjar case is not clear yet.

The question that needs an answer is: Did he hear something directly from the people involved in the murder of Nijjar, or those who allegedly directed it, or was it hearsay? If Gupta has any first-hand knowledge of the plot to kill Nijjar, which is a strong possibility in light of what the US prosecutors have stated in their press statement, the Canadian prosecutors, too, may like him to depose to make a stronger case against the four accused in their custody.

Since Gupta is seeking a reduced sentence (he could be imprisoned for a maximum of 40 years in the Pannun case), the possibility of his cooperating with Canadian prosecutors cannot be ruled out.

Now, what does this mean for the Narendra Modi government?

Assassinations have been used as instruments of State policies since time immemorial. The US, which is sermonising to India on the Pannun plot, is guilty of carrying out assassinations with impunity, including heads of state. But the key difference is that no officer of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been caught while carrying out such operations. If the Nijjar assassination or the plot to kill Pannun had some kind of official sanction, at least the task should have been handled in utmost secrecy and with requisite professional skills. It is also equally important that availing the option of assassinating an enemy of the state is always the last resort. In the US, the kill option is employed only after a sanction from none other than the president himself. Such decisions carry immense weight, and are not taken casually.

But the plot to murder Pannun was carried out with such amateurish zeal that it is attracting world-wide embarrassment for the Modi government. If the charges are true, the Pannun plot also shows there was an atmosphere of impunity within India’s external intelligence agency where tasks of this nature were handled by operatives who lacked basic knowledge of the craft.

The Nijjar case set India-Canada ties back by decades, but thanks to Donald Trump, Canada is trying to rebuild common ground with India. In the case of the US, political memory may be very short, but its institutional and bureaucratic memory is very long. The Pannun plot may haunt the Indian establishment for decades to come.

Rajesh Ahuja is an independent journalist who writes on national security and investigation agencies.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.