The Trial for contract killing The prosecution of a man accused of plotting assassinations for the Indian government in New York has been delayed.
The trial of alleged drug and weapons smuggler Nikhil (Nick) Gupta was scheduled to begin Monday in New York City.
Gupta is accused of conspiring with officials of the Indian government and its foreign intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun – a Sikh independence activist and US-Canadian citizen who Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has declared a terrorist.
Preliminary proceedings filed by prosecutors in the case indicate they plan to release new evidence, including wiretaps and video recordings, about the 2023 killing of Pannun’s Canadian deputy, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in Surrey, B.C.
By reviving the controversy over India’s involvement in the Nijjar killing and presenting new evidence implicating Indian officials, the trial could complicate efforts by both the Indian and Canadian governments to put the Nijjar dispute behind them and restore normal diplomatic relations.
Gupta is trying to represent himself
Gupta asked for a delay. He had complained about the public defender assigned to him by the court and requested to represent himself in court.
In a pretrial motion filed with Chief U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero, Gupta claimed that his court-appointed attorney, Matthew Laroche, discussed the case with an assistant U.S. attorney and that “counsel’s comments indicated that after that conversation he was disinclined to vigorously defend this case.”
Gupta also accused the lawyer of “unprofessional, fraudulent and misleading conduct.” That included, according to him, his failure to file a motion to dismiss the charges on Gupta’s behalf and then falsely telling Gupta that the judge had declined to accept it.
The judge accepted Gupta’s request and delayed the trial. There will now be a preliminary hearing on November 14th to set a new date.
Gupta has been assigned a new public defender, New York attorney David Touger, although he continues to say he wants to represent himself.
Nijjar was present at the trial
Although Gupta is not directly involved in the conspiracy to murder Hardeep Singh Nijjar, US prosecutors have already filed documents making it clear that they intend to closely investigate the links between the alleged Pannun conspiracy and the BC group that killed Nijjar in the parking lot of a Surrey gurdwara.
The person allegedly responsible for linking these murders is unindicted co-conspirator Vikash Yadav, who was then an India-based R&AW agent. According to Indian media reports, Yadav has since been fired from his job at R&AW but is not expected to face trial in the US.
The New York court’s statement of claim alleges that in addition to Pannun and Nijjar, the conspirators also targeted a third person in Nepal or Pakistan, a conspiracy “so strikingly similar to the murder conspiracy (Pannun) as to constitute a modus operandi within the meaning of the law.”
U.S. prosecutors explained their intention to present in court wiretapped conversations between Gupta and a man he believed would help in the assassination but who was actually a confidential informant who tipped federal authorities about the plot. They are also expected to produce recordings of conversations between Gupta and an undercover federal agent who Gupta believed was a hit man.
The Modi government has admitted that Yadav played a role in the conspiracy, but not that she played a major role in the Indian government. Instead, Yadav was described as a renegade actor. India has denied any involvement in the Nijjar killing. The evidence expected to be presented in court will almost certainly undermine India’s efforts to keep the two cases separate.
Federal authorities say they have wiretap evidence that Gupta showed the alleged killer a new video of Nijjar’s killing just hours after the crime and encouraged him to get to work tracking down and killing his New York target, Pannun.
