NEW DELHI:
US authorities foiled a plot to kill a Sikh separatist in the United States and issued a warning to India over concerns that the government in New Delhi was involved, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed sources.
There was no immediate response from India’s foreign ministry to requests for comment on the report. A spokesman for the US embassy said it does not comment on discussions with its partners on diplomatic, law enforcement or intelligence matters.
The Financial Times reported that the sources did not say whether the protest in India resulted in the conspirators abandoning the plot or whether it was foiled by the FBI.
The newspaper identified Gurpatwant Singh Pannun as the target of the foiled plot, against whom India’s counter-terrorism agency filed a case on Monday saying he had warned passengers of flag carrier Air India in video messages shared on social media this month that the their lives were in danger. .
The protest in New Delhi was recorded after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted an official visit by President Joe Biden in June, the report said.
The report comes two months after Canada said there were “credible” allegations linking Indian agents to the June killing of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in a Vancouver suburb.
Also read: Trudeau calls on India to cooperate in assassination probe
India rejected Canada’s accusations.
In addition to the diplomatic warning to India, US federal prosecutors have also filed a sealed indictment against at least one suspect in a New York district court, the FT report said.
Pannun, like Nijjar, is a champion of a decade-old but now fringe demand for an independent Sikh homeland from India called Khalistan, a plan the Indian government sees as a security threat due to a violent insurgency in the decades 1970s and 1980s.
He is the general counsel of the Sikh Justice (SFJ), which India designated an “illegal association” in 2019, citing its involvement in extremist activities. Pannun was listed as an “individual terrorist” by India in 2020.
India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) has registered a case against him on charges related to terrorism and conspiracy, among others. It said he also threatened in his video messages not to let Air India operate anywhere in the world.
Read: Canadian police investigate video warning not to fly Air India
Pannun said on Tuesday Reuters that his message was to “boycott Air India not bomb”. The NIA case comes in the historical backdrop of a 1985 bombing of an Air India plane flying from Canada to India that killed all 329 people on board, which was blamed on Sikh militants.
The FT report said Panun declined to say whether US authorities had warned him about the plan.
After the FT report Pannun said Reuters that he would let the US government respond “in the matter of threats to my life on American soil by Indian agents”.
“Just as the killing of Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar by Indian agents on Canadian soil was a challenge to Canada’s sovereignty, the threat to an American citizen on American soil is a challenge to America’s sovereignty,” he said.
Canada worked very closely with the United States on intelligence that Indian agents were potentially involved in Nijjar’s murder, a senior Canadian government source said Reuters In September.
The Financial Times report said the United States shared details of the aborted plan with a wider group of allies after Canada’s public accusation.
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