India will kill me, but I don’t fear death, Sikhs for Justice founder Gurpatwant Singh Pannun said as he mocked the government’s claim that it was looking into the assassination plots being hatched to target the Khalistani sympathiser.
“The only thing, I think, (the) Indian government is going to investigate (is) why their hitman could not kill one person. That’s what they will be investigating,” he said.
Rejecting the Indian government’s decision to label him a terrorist, Pannun said: “We are the ones who are fighting India’s violence with words. We are fighting India’s bullets with the ballot. They are giving money, hundreds of thousands, to kill me. Let the world decide who is a terrorist and who isn’t.”
Top Intelligence sources told CNN-News18 that Pannun is trying to gain monetary advantage with the claim of the Americans that an Indian national — Nikhil Gupta — had been charged with conspiracy to murder the Sikhs for Justice founder who has been designated a terrorist by the Indian government. The US attorney’s office on Wednesday said Nikhil Gupta was arrested by Czech authorities in June and is awaiting extradition.
The US, which is putting pressure on the Czech Republic to extradite Gupta, is likely to be successful but Indian authorities said the country does not have any evidence against him as he is not involved in any way.
Sources said the two countries are in constant touch to avoid any bad relationship and, if needed, all assistance will be given to Gupta.
Sources said Americans should watch Pannun carefully and see his role in instigating sentiments and threatening a country and its leaders.
“He is named as an accused in NIA’s multiple FIRs and he should be handed over to India by US or Canada. We are pushing the case in both the countries but there has been no response and instead of cooperation, they are harbouring a terrorist,” they said.
The sources said American diplomats and their counterparts in India are in regular touch with each other and have been sharing intelligence.
“This arrest is meaningless because Americans are suddenly trying to connect this to the Indian government’s role in killing Pannun. Their response about Pannun’s activities should have been faster than this where we are giving direct evidence against Pannun and FIRs have been filed by federal agencies in India,” they said.
“They keep quiet every day when he is threatening the Indian prime minister, the external affairs minister and NSA on a daily basis,” they added.
Sources, meanwhile, said India is also watching Gupta’s case carefully but it is wrong to say that Indian agencies gave him the task of killing Pannun.
Not naming him, prosecutors described Pannun as a “vocal critic of the Indian government who leads a US-based organization that advocates for the secession of India’s Punjab state, which is home to a large population of Sikhs”. The organisation, Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), is banned in India.
According to a report published by news agency Reuters, Damian Williams, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, said: “The defendant conspired from India to assassinate, right here in New York City, a US citizen of Indian origin who has publicly advocated for the establishment of a sovereign state for Sikhs.”
The charges come after a senior Biden administration official last week said US authorities had thwarted a plot to kill a Sikh separatist on American soil and issued a warning to India over concerns about New Delhi’s involvement. The official had said Pannun was the target of the plot.
Meanwhile, citing senior administration officials, The Washington Post on Wednesday said the US has sent its two top intelligence officials to India to press for an investigation into an alleged plot to assassinate the Sikh separatist leader and hold to account those responsible. CIA director William J Burns and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines are the two officials, the report stated.
On the same day, India also said it has formed a high-level inquiry committee to probe allegations relating to a conspiracy to kill Pannun.
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