On November 29, the US Justice department unsealed a startling indictment against an Indian national who had been arrested in the Czech republic on June 30, 2023 and transferred to the United States. The Indian national, Nikhil Gupta, had an existing criminal record in India and was promised that his slate would be wiped clean if he helped orchestrate a plot on behalf of an Indian government official, named in the indictment as CC-1, to engage in a series of assassinations of Sikh activists in the United States and Canada.
https://www.justice.gov/media/1326501/dl?inline
Gupta, the alleged middle-man, then proceeded to contact what he believed were criminal associates in the US to do the dirty work. But, in fact, these associates were informants and undercover officers working for the FBI. US law enforcement was clearly onto Gupta and were able to intercept and read encrypted messaging apps containing traffic between him and his Indian government controller.
In Gupta’s contacts with his supposed hit team he also reveals that there would be more “wet work” ahead and that there was a target list of several individuals, beyond Gupta’s prime target, now named as a US based- lawyer and Sikh activist, Gurpatwant Singh Pannum. Pannum was a leading figure in the campaign for an independent Sikh state, Khalistan, a campaign that has deeply enraged successive Indian governments. Pannum was also a close associate of Canadian Hardeep Singh Nijjar who was gunned down in Surrey, B.C. in June.
We learn from the US indictment that Gupta had told an undercover FBI officer that Nijjar was on the target list and was ranked as “#4, #3.” Nijjar was gunned down on June 18. That same evening, Gupta’s Indian government handler sent him a video clip showing Nijjar’s body slumped in his vehicle. Gupta forwarded the video clip to what he thought was his hit team, with the “good news” that the other assassination targeting Mr. Pannum, could go ahead. Thanks to the FBI undercover operation, Mr. Pannum escaped Mr. Nijjar’s fate.
This sordid tale adds further weighty credibility to the Canadian government’s public claim that there was Indian official involvement in the murder of Mr. Nijjar, a claim that the Indian government has strenuously denied. The Indian government response had a ring of protesting (way) too much. New Delhi then reacted by creating a freeze in diplomatic relations with Canada, expelling a large number of Canadian diplomats from India, suspending visa applications for a time, and suggesting Canada had failed to provide the Indian government with any material evidence of a supposed plot involving Mr. Nijjar.
In response to the unsealing of the US indictment, the Indian government has now pivoted to announce that it has created a “high level inquiry” into the matter. That is more of a concession than the Canadian government was able to obtain, but it also shifts the focus onto the higher plane of India-US relations.
One mystery that the unsealed indictment does not solve is the identity of the Indian government agency involved in directing this “Murder Inc.” plot on Western soil. The controller of the plot is only identified as “CC-1.” But CC-1 has some credentials conveyed in intercepted communications, including his rank as a “senior field officer” with responsibilities in security “management” and “intelligence.” CC-1 described him or herself as a former police officer, with training in “battle craft” and weapons.”
Blow me down, but such a profile fits perfectly an official in India’s RAW (Research and Analysis Wing), an intelligence agency that reports directly to the Indian Prime Minister’s office. Recall that after the Nijjar assassination, the Canadian government moved to expel an Indian diplomat who was identified as the head of RAW in Canada.
The Trudeau government’s handling of the Nijjar assassination and its claims of Indian government involvement may ultimately prove on the mark.
But the US indictment raises a concern about whether enough was done to protect Mr. Nijjar. Already there are suggestions that Canada “failed” Mr. Nijjar. Frankly, it is far too soon to reach any such evidence-free conclusion. We know that Mr. Nijjar was warned about threats to him by the RCMP prior to his assassination. But Canadian security and enforcement may not have been privy to any details of the plot against Mr. Nijjar either from their own intelligence or from information shared by the FBI—persons involved, nature of the operations, timing etc. “Actionable” intelligence is critical in such circumstances and it may just not have been available.
What the US indictment does tells us is that middle-man Gupta was knowledgeable that Nijjar was a target, but was not directly involved in the assassination planning. The timeline laid out in the US indictment suggests Gupta had only general knowledge of the Nijjar plot and that that general knowledge was only shared with his FBI undercover officers in the days immediately preceding the hit against Nijjar.
On June 15, three days before the Nijjar assassination, Gupta was telling his undercover FBI informant that he was still waiting on details about the Canadian target. A day later, in another intercepted communication, he simply told his FBI informant that “we are doing their job, brother. We are doing their New York and Canada [job].”
Maybe there was a breakdown in intelligence sharing between the FBI and Canadian authorities about the plot against Nijjar; maybe the Canadian authorities failed somehow in their own threat assessment. But on the scant evidence contained in the US indictment, there is nothing to suggest the availability of actionable intelligence about the Nijjar assassination.
The scary thing that emerges is the suggestion that the Nijjar operation was conducted independently, but still under the direction of Indian government officials. In other words, multiple hit teams were on the loose. In the Nijjar case there was no Indian middle-man dupe, working credulously with FBI undercover operatives. Whatever team operated in Canada eluded the authorities.
Hopefully that act of evasion will not be sustained, if a Canadian criminal investigation is ultimately successful. It won’t roll back the clock, but it would be a powerful deterrent to any future such actions on Canadian soil.
I am just trying to caution against leaping to conclusions about what was known by Canadian agencies, in the absence of evidence. What the US indictment indicates is that the Nijjar assassination was conducted by a separate hit team, and that Gupta did not have any direct operational involvement, so knowledge derived from FBI informants and from intercepts of Gupta's comms about the details of a plot against Nijjar may have been limited and not actionable What is interesting to me is that Gupta met in person with his Indian government handler and so may have more to say to US authorities about the identity and role of this person. It is worth noting that the Indian intelligence handler was not identified as a co-conspirator in the indictment.
It will be interesting to find out if any intelligence that the U.S. supposedly shared with Canada came before the assassination of Mr. Nijjar. You suggest that "Canadian security and enforcement may not have been privy to any details of the plot against Mr. Nijjar either from their own intelligence or from information shared by the FBI". Shouldn't we assume that that Canadian authorities should have had some knowledge of this through 5-eyes or the FBI? If not, that would be a shocking failure of information sharing in the intelligence community wouldn't it?