By: Serach Nissim

On Monday Nikhil Gupta, 52, made his first appearance in Manhattan federal court, pleading not guilty to the charges.

As reported by the NY Times, last year Gupta was arrested in the Czech Republic, and charged with orchestrating a failed assassination plot against a Sikh separatist in New York. Prosecutors in the case allege that he devised a plot, on behalf of an unnamed official in India’s government, to arrange the murder of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, an American citizen and lawyer for a New York-based Sikh secessionist group. The plan played out as doubt spread about India’s commitment to democracy.

Mr. Gupta has been in the U.S. since Friday, having been extradited in order to attend the trial. He is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. He was in attendance on Monday morning at the Lower Manhattan courtroom, with his defense lawyer Jeffrey Chabrowe. In a statement to reporters after the arraignment, Mr. Chabrowe called the case a “complex matter” for India and the United States. “Background and details will develop that may cast government allegations into an entirely new light,” the lawyer said.

Per the Times, Mr. Gupta is charged with murder for hire and conspiracy to commit murder for hire. If convicted he may face up to 10 years in prison for each charge. He is slated to appear in the courtroom again on June 28.

In an indictment unsealed in November, Manhattan federal prosecutors allege Gupta orchestrated a bold plot that began around May 2023, when an Indian government employee tapped Mr. Gupta to plan Mr. Pannun’s assassination. Mr. Pannun, who was living in NY at the time being banned from India, is the general counsel of Sikhs for Justice, a group that supports the secession of Punjab, a state in northern India. Pannun has been an outspoken critic of the Indian government.

Per the Times, Gupta was allegedly caught red handed when he contacted a man in NY, who he believed would help him hire a hit man. Unbeknownst to him, the man he contacted was actually an agent for the American government. The agent was supposed to introduce Mr. Gupta to a hitman, under the direction of the Indian government employee— but actually introduced him to an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration officer, pretending to be the hit man. Mr. Gupta alleged brokered a deal in which the Indian government official agreed to pay the D.E.A. officer $100,000 to murder Mr. Pannun, having paid a $15,000 cash advance for the job, as per prosecutors.

Mr. Gupta instructed the undercover officer to complete the assassination as soon as possible, but asked him not to do so during the time when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Washington to meet President Joe Biden in June 2023, as per the indictment.

Mr. Gupta allegedly gave the undercover officer Mr. Pannun’s personal information, including his NY address and phone number, and also reportedly forwarded surveillance photos of Mr. Pannun that the Indian agent had given him.

Prosecutors also note that on June 18 of last year, in Canada’s British Columbia gunmen killed Hardeep Singh Nijjar, another Sikh separatist leader. Mr. Nijjar was also a verbal critic of the Indian government, and knew Mr. Pannun.