Probe links of Indian officials, say Indian-American groups after guilty plea in Pannun murder plot
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Indian-American advocacy groups and Sikh-American organisations have called on the Trump administration to address India’s alleged attempts to intimidate critics abroad and to investigate the role of senior Indian government officials.
On February 13, Indian citizen Nikhil Gupta pleaded guilty to a plot to kill Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, purportedly on orders from an Indian government employee. The Indian government, which has designated Pannun as an individual terrorist under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, has not commented on Gupta’s guilty plea.
Gupta admitted in a federal court in Manhattan that he agreed to murder Pannun, an American lawyer in New York who has been advocating for Khalistan, an independent homeland for Sikhs. In his plea, Gupta said he paid $15,000 as an advance to a man he believed was a hitman. The man turned out to be an undercover operative of the US Drug Enforcement Agency.
Ria Chakrabarty, senior policy director at the advocacy group Hindus for Human Rights, said the alleged attempted assassination of Panun was “just one part of a larger campaign of repressing any kind of criticism of the government of India from the outside”.
Chakrabarty cited the revocations of the Overseas Citizen of India cards of Indian-origin citizens in other countries and the blacklisting of academics and...