Washington India has conveyed to the US that it has arrested the person identified as “CC1” in a US Department of Justice (DOJ) indictment, which had implicated this person of directing an assassination plot of an American citizen on American soil, a US official has told HT.
CC1, India has also told the US, is no longer a government official and the high-level enquiry committee set up in the aftermath of the allegations is continuing to investigate this person’s other linkages.
Members of this Indian enquiry committee are travelling to Washington DC and will meet American officials to share their findings and gain insights into the US investigation into the case on Tuesday, the official confirmed to HT. The news of the committee’s travel was first put out in a State Department press release on Monday evening (IST), a release that was deleted and had not been republished at the time of going to press.
The DOJ indictment identified CC1 as a serving government of India official and implicated this person as directing the alleged assassination plot against Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a designated terrorist in India who happened to be an American national, in New York in June 2023. In a story in April this year, Washington Post identified CC1 as Vikram Yadav.
The US official quoted above told HT that the US is “encouraged” by the steps that India has taken. “We are encouraged that this person is no longer a government employee. We have also been informed that he has been arrested on local charges. The Indian enquiry committee is travelling to Washington DC and will also be meeting officials here.”
All of this, the US official said, showed the “sustained engagement at the highest levels” to address the allegations. The US said that the government of India had taken the allegations seriously, and these steps reflected the seriousness with which both governments were seeking to fix accountability, the official reiterated. The official confirmed that there had been “frequent” and sustained engagement between US National Security Adviser (NSA) Jake Sullivan and Indian NSA Ajit Doval, as well as among officials at different levels of both governments.
The news of both the committee’s travel to the US, as well as the arrest of CC1, came on a day when India downgraded its diplomatic relationship with Canada, recalling its high commissioner from Ottawa and expelling six Canadian diplomats.
Asked if there was a degree of coordination behind all these developments, the US official said that the “timing” was “not related at all”, and there had just been a “remarkable overlap”. “The enquiry committee’s visit and meetings had been planned for a while.”
Asked if there was a trilateral conversation happening between US, Canada and India on the broader issue, the official said that US was aware of the developments on the India-Canada front and had spoken to both India and Canada separately but there was no trilateral conversation. The official also emphasised that the Indian enquiry committee’s scheduled meetings in DC were focused solely on the US case and were “not related” to the Canadian investigation.
“We are very committed to pursuing accountability with regard to allegations here. We are also committed to continuing to work with India on these allegations,” the official reiterated.
The State Department statement on the committee’s visit was released on Monday morning eastern time, around 9.20am (Wednesday evening IST), just hours after India slammed Canada for labelling its high commissioner as a “person of interest” in its investigation into the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a designated terrorist in India who happened to be a Canadian national. By noon eastern, the statement was deleted from the Department website, with the page reading, “This page may have been moved, deleted, or is otherwise unavailable”.
The released-and-then-deleted US statement said, “An Indian Enquiry Committee that was established to investigate activities of certain organized criminals is actively investigating the individual who was identified last year in the Department of Justice’s indictment as an Indian government employee who directed a foiled plot to assassinate a U.S. citizen in New York City. The Enquiry Committee will be travelling to Washington, D.C. on October 15th, as part of their ongoing investigations to discuss the case, including information they have obtained, and to receive an update from U.S. authorities regarding the U.S. case that is proceeding.”
The statement added that India has also informed the US that India was continuing its efforts to “investigate other linkages of the former government employee and will determine follow up steps, as necessary”.
The alleged plot laid out by the DOJ indictment was foiled. Nikhil Gupta, the intermediary allegedly used by CC1, was arrested in Prague last year and extradited to US this year, with his trial is set to commence soon. The hired assassin, allegedly hired by Gupta, turned out to be an American law-enforcement agent. When the allegations came to light at the end of 2023, the US demanded accountability from India. India said that this was not government policy, but set up an enquiry committee to examine the inputs shared by the American side. The composition of the committee was not made public but was shared with the US.
Based on the DOJ indictment, Pannun, in September, also filed a legal suit in New York against the government of India, Doval, and the then R&AW chief Samant Goel. In what is a routine judicial response to cases of this nature, a New York court issued summons against those named in the suit. Doval did not accompany Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit to the US last month, with his absence widely attributed to the controversy and the summons.
The manner in which both the American and Indian authorities have dealt with the allegation stands in stark contrast to similar allegations mounted by Canada against India.
US officials privately shared specific inputs with senior Indian counterparts from August to October 2023, before the story became public and the DOJ issued the indictment, unlike Canada where PM Justin Trudeau choose to go public on the floor of his parliament and has not, in over a year, shared any evidence with India.
The US also did not make the relationship hostage to the allegations, with sustained high-level engagement continuing between the two countries and top officials saying that matter was being dealt with through appropriate channels between law enforcement and through the legal route. India responded differently too, as it publicly acknowledged receiving American inputs, announced the formation of the high-level committee, reportedly took action against the concerned official, and continued its investigation.