Our Bureau
Washington, DC
US and Indian security officials finally named a Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) agent who allegedly plotted the assassination of Khalistani terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on American soil. The Washington Post cited officials and a US indictment to claim that it was RAW officer Vikram Yadav who had “forwarded details about the target”, Pannun, including his New York address.
The White House, responding to a question on the assassination plot of Sikh separatist leader, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, on US soil, said that the Indian government is taking the matter very seriously and that they will continue to raise their concerns with the Indian government. Jean-Pierre, the press secretary, said an investigation is underway and the Department of Justice (DOJ) is running a criminal investigation.
The assassination is a “priority now,” wrote Vikram Yadav, an officer in India’s spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, according to current and former U.S. and Indian security officials.
As soon as the would-be assassins could confirm that Pannun was home, “it will be a go-ahead from us,” the officials said, as per the Washington Post’s report. It added that as per US intelligence agencies, the operation targeting Pannun was approved by the RAW chief at the time, Samant Goel.
The report added that this “examination of Indian assassination plots in North America” is based on “interviews with more than three dozen current and former senior officials in the United States, India, Canada, Britain, Germany and Australia.”
The report reiterated that Yadav’s identity and affiliation “provide the most explicit evidence to date that the assassination plan…was directed from within the Indian spy service”. It cited current and former Western security officials as saying that “higher-ranking RAW officials have also been implicated”.
The United States had reportedly thwarted an attempt to assassinate Khalistan separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on US soil. India had then reacted to these claims, saying that it had taken the inputs ‘very seriously’ and that an investigation into the matter had already begun.
The foiled assassination was part of an escalating campaign of aggression by RAW against the Indian diaspora in Asia, Europe and North America, officials said.
