US prosecutors have alleged in court that former Indian RAW officer Vikas Yadav promised to provide weapons to Nikhil Gupta and also arranged flight clearances to transport weapons from India so that Gupta could sell them to a man he believed to be a smuggler. In return, Gupta would help hire a contract killer to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannu, a Sikh separatist, in New York. The allegations emerged in a document filed by the US government in a federal court in New York on September 22. It is a ‘motion in limine’ – a pre-trial request in which lawyers ask the judge to decide before the trial begins what evidence can and cannot be shown to the jury. It is known that Nikhil Gupta, 52, is accused of conspiring to murder Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannu. Pannu is a US-Canadian citizen and the general counsel of the banned organisation Sikhs for Justice in India. Gupta’s trial is scheduled to begin on November 3. US prosecutors first charged Nikhil Gupta in November 2023 with conspiring to murder Pannu. They said Gupta hatched the plot on the orders of an Indian government official, identified in documents only as ‘CC-1’.
Three weeks later, on December 18, the Special Cell of the Delhi Police arrested Vikas Yadav in a separate case (kidnapping and extortion). Yadav spent four months in Tihar Jail and was granted bail in April 2024. His whereabouts have been unclear since then. In October 2024, US authorities issued a second “superseding indication”, identifying “CC-1” as Vikas Yadav. The document described him as an official in the Cabinet Secretariat under the Prime Minister’s Office. In January 2025, a high-level committee of the Indian government explicitly acknowledged his role and recommended legal action against him. According to the latest action filed by US prosecutors, Gupta was having an affair with a man he believed to be a drug trafficker, but in fact he was secretly working for US law enforcement agencies. Prosecutors said that during the conspiracy, while they were discussing the contract killing of the victim, Gupta and the CS (confidential source) were also negotiating a drug and arms deal. Gupta went to Prague, where he was arrested. One of the purposes of his trip was to meet the CS and finalize the deal. According to reports, Gupta had gone to Yadav to get a supply of arms, which he was later going to exchange for drugs. In a WhatsApp message dated June 22, 2023, Yadav allegedly promised to provide ‘assault rifles and pistols’ and also arranged clearance for a plane to transport weapons from India. On June 26, Gupta contacted Yadav again and asked for information about “toys,” which prosecutors say is a code word for weapons. Prosecutors say Yadav then responded that he would provide the weapons only after the murder was completed. US prosecutors argued that these conversations show that Yadav’s alleged support was contingent on Pannu’s murder. That is, the offer to provide weapons was directly linked to the contract killing conspiracy. Prosecutors have claimed in previous indictments that Gupta and Yadav were not limited to the New York conspiracy, but also discussed other potential murders. The latest document says at least one other target was in California and another in the Indian subcontinent. According to the prosecutor’s letter to the judge, starting in May 2023, when Yadav asked Gupta to ‘write my name Aman’, Yadav told Gupta via WhatsApp that there were several ‘targets’, including one in New York, one in California, and at least one in Nepal or Pakistan, with addresses mentioned. During the conversation involving Nepal, Yadav gave Gupta the location of the target so that he could pass it on to the contract killers. Gupta called them “soldiers.” On May 8, Gupta wrote to Yadav, “People have reached Nepal and are looking for the target.” Yadav pressured Gupta to give him more money, saying the work was “urgent.” In one message, Yadav instructed: “If they really have found the target. Kill him. Otherwise, we won’t get another chance.”
Prosecutors argued that Yadav and Gupta’s conversations regarding the Nepal task were ‘very similar to the conversations regarding the New York task,’ and described the Nepal plot as having ‘extreme similarities’ to the Pannu scheme. The document further details Gupta’s long history of drug and arms trafficking. Prosecutors allege that he first discussed heroin and weapons with a confidential government source in 2013. It added that in 2017, Gupta asked CS to arrange for a courier to collect $25,000 in Cuba, saying he had been there before and had brought $10,000 out undeclared. He later claimed that his “main business” was money laundering. He proudly said he had transported $20 million from Cuba to Los Angeles with credit cards taped to his feet, and sent $50 million from Ecuador to Panama.
