Demonstrators beat effigy of India’s prime minister outside courthouse after hearing

By LARRY NEUMEISTER The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Demonstrators who blame the Indian government for a murder-for-hire scheme targeting a prominent Sikh separatist leader living in New York City beat an effigy of the country’s prime minister outside a Manhattan courthouse on Friday after a hearing for an man charged in the plot.

The demonstration by more than a dozen Sikhs came one day after a rewritten indictment in the case charged an Indian government employee in connection with the foiled plan. The India-based employee, Vikash Yadav, remains at large.

Across the street from the courthouse, the demonstrators put a shackled effigy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi inside a makeshift jail cell. Another cardboard likeness of Modi was pounded in the face and kicked around on the sidewalk.

Nikhil Gupta, who has previously charged, pleaded not guilty during the hearing, which alleges that Yadav recruited Gupta to orchestrate the assassination.

Gupta, 53, has been held without bail since he was extradited to the United States in June from the Czech Republic, where he was arrested in Prague in 2022.

U.S. authorities announced in November 2023 that the plot against Gurpatwant Singh Pannun had been thwarted that June after a sting led by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Pannun, 57, advocates for the creation of a sovereign Sikh state and is considered a terrorist by the Indian government.

Prosecutors say Yadav recruited Gupta, an associate, in May 2023 after Gupta described his involvement in international narcotics and weapons trafficking in various communications to Yadav and others.

Yadav directed Gupta to contact an individual whom Gupta believed to be a criminal associate to help him find a hitman, according to the indictment. It does not identify Pannun by name, only referencing him as the “victim.”

The man Gupta thought was a criminal associate was actually a DEA informant, the indictment says.

Yadav told Gupta that $150,000 could be offered for the killing, according to the document, and “the offer will go higher depending upon the quality of the work … and if it’s done as soon as possible.”

The indictment said Gupta also promised the informant that “they have more jobs, more jobs,” referring to more targeted killings, two to three a month.

Pannun, who did not attend Friday’s hearing, said in a phone interview afterward that the demonstrators surely focused their anger on Modi because “the directive to kill has come from the prime minister’s office.”

The indictment’s addition of charges against a single Indian government employee “is not going to stop Modi’s violent transnational repression,” Pannun said, adding that New Delhi continues to have a “strong spy network in America still loyal to Modi’s ideology.”