US authorities thwarted a conspiracy to assassinate a Sikh separatist on American soil and issued a warning to India’s government over concerns it was involved in the plot, according to multiple people familiar with the case.
The target of the plot was Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, an American and Canadian citizen who is general counsel for Sikhs for Justice, a US-based group that is part of a movement pushing for an independent Sikh state called “Khalistan”.
US President Joe Biden raised the matter in a discussion with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a meeting at the G20 summit in New Delhi in September, the Financial Times has learnt.
The National Security Council confirmed the Financial Times report of the plot on Wednesday and said the US had raised the issue with India, including “at the senior-most levels”.
The people familiar with the case, who requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the intelligence that prompted the warning, did not say whether the protest to New Delhi led the plotters to abandon their plan, or whether the FBI intervened and foiled a scheme already in motion.
The US informed some allies about the plot following the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian Sikh separatist killed in Vancouver in June. In September, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there were “credible allegations” linking New Delhi to Nijjar’s fatal shooting.
One person familiar with the situation said the initial US protest over the Pannun plot was issued after Modi made a high-profile state visit to Washington in June.
Separate from the diplomatic warning, US federal prosecutors have filed a sealed indictment against at least one alleged perpetrator of the plot in a New York district court, according to people familiar with the case.
The US Department of Justice is debating whether to unseal the indictment and make the allegations public or wait until Canada finishes its investigation into Nijjar’s murder. Further complicating the case, one person charged in the indictment is believed to have left the US, according to people familiar with the proceedings.
The DoJ and FBI declined to comment. The National Security Council told the Financial Times ahead of publication of the story that the US did “not comment on ongoing law enforcement matters or private diplomatic discussions with our partners”. But it added: “Upholding the safety and security of US citizens is paramount.”
Following publication of the story, the NSC issued a statement saying the US was treating the issue with “utmost seriousness”.
“We understand the Indian government is further investigating this issue and will have more to say about it in the coming days,” added Adrienne Watson, NSC spokesperson. “We have conveyed our expectation that anyone deemed responsible should be held accountable.”
Washington shared details of the Pannun case with a wider group of allies after Trudeau went public with details of the Vancouver killing, the combination of which sparked concern among allies about a possible pattern of behaviour.
India has rejected Canada’s claims about New Delhi’s possible involvement in Nijjar’s murder as “absurd”.
India’s external affairs ministry said after the FT’s report that during recent discussions on India-US security co-operation, “the US side shared some inputs pertaining to [the] nexus between organised criminals, gun runners, terrorists and others”.
“The inputs are a cause of concern for both countries and they decided to take necessary follow-up action,” the ministry said, adding that the issues were “already being examined by relevant departments”.
Contacted by the FT, Pannun declined to say whether US authorities had warned him about the plot, saying he would “let the US government respond to the issue of threats to my life on American soil from the Indian operatives”.
“The threat to an American citizen on American soil is a challenge to America’s sovereignty, and I trust that the Biden administration is more than capable to handle any such challenge,” Pannun said.
The White House said Indian officials had expressed “surprise and concern” when it raised the issue, and said that “activity of this nature was not their policy”. India’s response resembled language used by its foreign minister S Jaishankar, who described the Canadian allegations as “not consistent with our policy”.
Pannun angered Indian officials this month when he issued a video in which he warned Sikhs not to fly on Air India because it would be “life threatening”. He told the FT he was not making a violent threat against…
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