Could 'plot to kill' Gurpatwant Singh Pannun derail India-US ties?

India and America are staring at a major diplomatic situation after the US Justice Department alleged an Indian government official’s role in the unsuccessful plot to kill Khalistani separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in New York. The explosive allegations could impact India and US ties even though both sides have put out measured responses so far. India’s reaction has been “markedly different”, as Bloomberg noted, this time than three months ago when Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau linked the Indian government agencies to the killing of Khalistan separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. What are the allegations by the US? What have India and the US said? Will this strain ties between the two countries? We explain. What has the US alleged? According to the indictment unsealed on Wednesday (29 November), prosecutors in Manhattan federal court accused an Indian national named Nikhil Gupta, 52, of trying to orchestrate the murder of Pannun in June, on the instructions by an Indian official, who has been identified only as CC-1, the chief conspirator, reported Bloomberg. The prosecutors alleged that the Indian official, whose responsibilities included security and intelligence, hired Gupta in May to plot the assassination, as per Reuters. The US Justice Department’s indictment refers to this Indian official as earlier serving in the Central Reserve Police Force and receiving “officer training” in “battle craft” and “weapons”, noted Indian Express. Citing the indictment, The Washington Post reported, “In June, the Indian government employee gave Gupta the home address of Pannun, his phone numbers and details about his daily conduct, including surveillance photos, which Gupta passed along to the undercover DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agent…” “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,” Damian Williams, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, said in a statement. Gupta was arrested in the Czech Republic in June and is awaiting extradition. [caption id=“attachment_13453302” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] The flags of the United States and India are displayed on the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House in Washington, on 21 June 2023. Reuters File Photo[/caption] Before the indictment An Indian official in the know of the matter told Reuters that the US started raising concerns with the Indian government in April. According to the official, the issue also came up when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi for the 2+2 dialogue on 10 November. A report in The Washington Post earlier this week revealed that US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director William Burns had met with their Indian counterparts to demand accountability after Nijjar’s killing in June in a Vancouver suburb. Reactions to the indictment In response to the US allegations, India said it had formed a high-level inquiry committee on 18 November to investigate “all the relevant aspects of the matter”. This came days after New Delhi said it is probing the inputs furnished by the US on the alleged plot to kill Pannun. According to Indian Express, this committee possibly comprises Indian officials from intelligence, investigative and law-enforcement agencies, along with a nominee from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi in a media briefing on Thursday (30 November) called the US allegations a “matter of concern”. “We cannot share any further information on such security matters. As regards the case against an individual that has been filed in a US court allegedly linking him to an Indian official, this is a matter of concern. We have said and let me reiterate that this is contrary to government policy,” he said, as per ANI.

#WATCH | MEA Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi says, "As regards the case against an individual that has been filed in a US court, allegedly linking him to an Indian official, this is a matter of concern. We have said that this is also contrary to government policy. The nexus between… pic.twitter.com/k445jwS78Y

— ANI (@ANI) November 30, 2023

White House National Security Council spokesperson, John Kirby, said on Thursday that the US “takes this very seriously,” referring to the indictment. He said, however, this would not affect the relations between India and the US. “India remains a strategic partner, and we are going to continue to work to improve and strengthen that strategic partnership with India,” ANI quoted him as saying. “At the same time, we take this very seriously. These allegations and this investigation, we take very seriously,” he added. Secretary of state Blinken made similar comments in Tel Aviv, saying that the US government takes the issue “very seriously”. “A number of us have raised this directly with the Indian government in past weeks,” he said, adding US president Joe Biden and his team “look forward to seeing the results” of India’s investigation, Bloomberg reported. What does it mean for India-US ties? Foreign policy experts do not believe the alleged murder plot will upend India’s ties with the US. The high-level meetings and expanding cooperation continued between the two countries despite the US reportedly unearthing the alleged murder plot in July. However, it was not all business as usual. As per ThePrint report, two senior Research and Analysis Wing officers – the head of the RAW station in San Francisco and the second-in-command of its operations in London – were expelled earlier this summer. The Indian government was also not allowed to replace RAW’s station chief in Washington, DC, after the its head retired in June. Biden’s foreign policy has been to bolster ties with the Indian government to counter China’s growing ambitions in Asia. Michael Kugelman, director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute, told The Washington Post that the China factor will not let the relations between the US and India deteriorate. “In most cases, if Washington accuses a foreign government of staging an assassination on its soil, US relations with that government would plunge into crisis. But the relationship with India is a special case. … It’s notable that once the administration found out, it didn’t scale down engagement with India. High-level meetings went on as scheduled,” he said. India’s cooperative response to the US allegations is also in sharp contrast to its reaction to PM Trudeau’s charges in September, with Delhi dubbing them “absurd” and even calling Canada a “safe haven” for “terrorists, extremists and organised crime”. “India doesn’t share a strategic partnership with Canada, which it does with the US” Happymon Jacob, an Indian foreign policy expert at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, told Reuters. “Both the US and India realise that they need each other, perhaps the US a bit more than India.” Speaking to Bloomberg, Richard Rossow, chair in US-India policy studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, “The two governments chose to proceed with meetings, and build up new areas of strategic cooperation, with this in the backdrop”. “The potential ramifications to the relationship, now that this plot has come to light, depends on the level of American public interest and related pressure on the Biden administration.” The relationship is important for both the countries, with the US being India’s largest trading partner. To avoid a “Pannun-sized problem” in these ties, New Delhi will have to be “transparent” and take necessary actions to “avoid any reputational cost”, as per Indian Express. According to Ashley Tellis, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, India and the US relations will “survive this fiasco” even though the issue of sovereignty involved in the alleged attempted attack on a US citizen on US soil would be “troubling” American officials. “But it will reinforce the qualms of many who believe that the claims about shared values between the US and  India  are simply mythology,” he told Reuters.  With inputs from agencies