Federal prosecutors in the United States announced this week that they had charged an Indian national in a murder-for-hire scheme that targeted a Sikh activist in New York. The plot was foiled, they said, but it further complicated the delicate diplomatic relations between the United States, Canada and India.
President Biden has sought to strengthen ties with India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, amid rising tensions with China and a standoff with Russia. But prosecutors said the plan to kill the activist in New York was organized by an Indian government official — potentially disrupting the Biden administration’s outreach to India.
The U.S. prosecutors also linked the plot to a murder in Canada last June. Relations between India and Canada had soured this fall after Canadian officials accused Indian government agents of the killing.
Here is a timeline of the events as American and Canadian officials have laid them out.
In or around May 2023
American prosecutors said that, around this time, an unnamed Indian government employee recruited Nikhil Gupta, an Indian national, to orchestrate the assassination of a U.S. citizen, according to the indictment. The target of the plot described in court documents was Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a vocal critic of the Indian government and the general counsel for Sikhs for Justice, which advocates the secession of Punjab, a state in northern India.
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