WASHINGTON: An Indian intelligence official has been indicted for his role in a foiled plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader in the United States, the Justice Department said Thursday.
Vikash Yadav, 39, who remains at large, is charged with conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire and money laundering, the department said.
Yadav is the second Indian national to be charged in the United States in the alleged plot to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a US and Canadian citizen who lives in New York.
Nikhil Gupta, 53, pleaded not guilty in June to involvement in the assassination plot after being extradited to the United States from the Czech Republic.
Pannun is affiliated with a New York-based group called Sikhs for Justice that advocates for the secession of Punjab, a northern Indian state with a large Sikh population.
Pannun, in a statement on X, denounced the alleged assassination plot as a “blatant case of India’s transnational terrorism” and a “threat to freedom of speech and democracy.”
The Justice Department accused Yadav of directing the plot and said he recruited Gupta in May 2023 to hire a hitman to carry out the murder.
Gupta allegedly contacted an individual he believed to be a criminal associate to hire a hitman. The individual was in fact a confidential source working with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
“Yadav, an employee of the Indian government, used his position of authority and access to confidential information to direct the attempted assassination of an outspoken critic of the Indian government here on US soil,” Anne Milgram, the DEA chief, said in a statement.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department “will be relentless in holding accountable any person — regardless of their position or proximity to power — who seeks to harm and silence American citizens.”
According to the Justice Department, Yadav was employed by the Indian government’s Cabinet Secretariat, which houses the country’s foreign intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).
The United States said Wednesday it had been informed by India that an intelligence operative accused of directing an assassination plot on US soil was no longer in government service.
“They did inform us that the individual who was named in the Justice Department indictment is no longer an employee of the Indian government,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said. “We are satisfied with the cooperation.”
The action by New Delhi represented a sharp contrast to its defiant approach to similar charges from Canada, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday accused India of violating his country’s sovereignty.
Canada has separately alleged that India arranged a plot on its soil that ended in the killing last year of a Sikh separatist, who was a naturalized Canadian citizen, outside a Vancouver temple.
Unlike the United States, Canada has highlighted its concerns publicly and at the highest level, with Trudeau criticizing India’s actions.
Canada and India on Monday expelled each other’s ambassadors as Ottawa said that the Indian campaign went further than previously reported.
India has rejected Canada’s charges and alleged a domestic political motive by Trudeau.
Canada has the largest Sikh community outside of India, concentrated in suburban areas that are critical in national elections.

LAGOS: Nigeria’s economic crisis and soaring petrol prices forced Bolaji Emmanuel to give up his driver and his Honda Pilot utility vehicle, as he struggles with spiking living costs.
Emmanuel is not alone. Many in Africa’s most populous country are abandoning their cars as the costs strain disposable income.
The price of petrol has risen more than fivefold since President Bola Tinubu took office in May 2023.
“I parked it at my son’s house. I use public transport now,” Emmanuel, a 72-year-old retired health worker, said. “It is not convenient, but it is what the economy demands.”
Since coming to power, Tinubu has ended a costly fuel subsidy and freed up the naira currency, in reforms that government officials and analysts say will revive the economy and attract investors.
But in the short term, Nigeria has seen one of its worst crises in decades with inflation at a three-decade high.
A liter of petrol sold for around 195 naira just before Tinubu took office. The price rose to at least 998 naira ($0.61) per liter in Lagos and 1,030 naira in the capital, Abuja, at the beginning of October. It can go for as much as 1,300 naira elsewhere.
Inflation reached an almost three-decade high of 34.19 percent in June. It has since slowed to 32.7 percent in September.
The slump in purchasing power is piling more hardship on locals, with more than 40 percent of the population living in poverty, according to the World Bank. That figure is expected to rise in 2024 and 2025, before it stabilizes in 2026.
The Nigerian middle class, which made up about 20 percent of the population in 2020, now readily sacrifices the comfort of private cars for survival.
Car dealers in Lagos and Abuja said that they had seen more and more people trading their fuel-guzzling cars and sports utility vehicles (SUVs) for more efficient vehicles to cut costs.
“People are actually selling their big cars these days,” Maji Abubakar, a car dealer in Abuja, said. “The problem is that even if you put them on the market, there isn’t much demand for them.”
“It has been more than a year since I sold a car with an eight-cylinder engine, and the major reason is the price of petrol,” he added.
With fewer cars on the road, even the notorious Lagos traffic, known as “go-slow,” has thinned out.
Elijah Bello, a tech entrepreneur in the southern state of Ogun, has looked for a buyer for his Lexus RX 350 SUV for months.
He has since bought a smaller, energy-saving Toyota Corolla to replace it.
The trend, which began last year, “will intensify” and “we will see fewer cars on the roads,” said Bunmi Bailey, head of research at SBM Intelligence risk consultancy.
Bailey can fill his small car for 55,000 naira. “I can use it for two weeks for my normal home-to-work movement,” he said, while his larger car consumes 110,000 naira worth of petrol in just eight days.
The market for new cars has dropped by 10 to 14 percent in the last year, said Kunle Jaiyesinmi, deputy director at the Lagos-based CFAO Group, which specializes in automobile distribution.
“An SUV that sold for 40 to 45 million naira ($24,000 to $27,000) about two years ago, for now, if you want to negotiate the price, you see that it is within the range of 95 or 100 million ($57,000 to $60,000),” Jaiyesinmi said.
But unyielding inflation and high exchange rates are steering more middle-class people away from used Japanese- and American-brand cars, toward increasingly popular Chinese-made ones.
Some are turning to bicycles, despite the lack of appropriate infrastructure in cities like Lagos, where car crashes are common.
“Sure, we notice (a rise in) cycling... for months since the fuel hike,” said Femi Thomas, head of FT Cycle Care, a Lagos-based organization that promotes cycle use.
Food delivery platform Glovo said it had recorded a growing interest in bicycle deliveries among its riders.
About 20 percent of orders are delivered by bike, Chidera Akwuba, the group’s public relations manager in Nigeria, said.