US levels drug trafficking charge against Gupta

The US government has levelled fresh charges against jailed Indian national Nikhil Gupta. The charges include money laundering, credit card fraud, trafficking of drugs and weapons, besides an attempt to kill a person in Nepal or Pakistan.

Gupta is accused of being involved in a murder-for-hire plot against Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. Arrested from the Czech Republic, Gupta was extradited to the US in June last year. His trial will commence in November at the US District Court, Southern District, New York.

The US Attorney, Southern District of New York, had filed a ‘motion in limine’ in the court asking for the inclusion of additional charges against Gupta. In the US legal system, a ‘motion in limine’ is filed to allow inclusion of specific evidence or testimony at the trial.

The attorney has requested the court to admit "evidence" of Gupta’s solicitation of the murder of individuals other than Pannun.

The US government intends to offer evidence that Gupta and Vikas Yadav targeted Pannun as a part of a larger plot to carry out murders, including killings of members of the Sikh separatist movement. Yadav, an official of the Central Reserve Police Force, was then on deputation to India’s external spying agency — the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), says the US application.

“(They were) engaged in the planning of additional murders in Canada and in Nepal or Pakistan,” says the application. It adds that Gupta and Yadav began working together in or about early May 2023, when Yadav asked Gupta to arrange the murder of Pannun — and the killing of another individual in Nepal or Pakistan. This was in exchange for Yadav’s assistance in getting a criminal case dismissed against Gupta in India.

It also accuses Gupta of narcotics and weapons trafficking, international money laundering and credit card fraud. The US application says it has evidence that Gupta trafficked narcotics and firearms from 2013 to 2023.