FBI chief in India following explosive US assassination plot indictment

CNN —

FBI director Christopher Wray is in India this week for a trip aimed at strengthening security cooperation and deepening a partnership. But it comes in the wake of a major law enforcement issue between the two nations – one far more sinister and with the potential to cause cracks within that alliance.

Just two weeks ago, the United States accused an Indian government official of being involved in a conspiracy to kill an American citizen on its home soil.

The citizen in question is Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a Sikh separatist, who was allegedly the target of a murder-for-hire plot in New York City.

Pannun is a wanted man in India – considered by the government there as a terrorist and national security threat. But to some Sikhs overseas, Pannun is an outspoken activist and a man rallying for a cause that has come to unite large swaths of the community’s international diaspora.

Late last month, US federal prosecutors charged an Indian national on suspicion of trying to kill him, according to an explosive indictment, which alleged the hitman was acting upon orders from an unnamed Indian government official.

The stunning revelation came little more than a month after Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly alleged that India may have been involved in the murder of another Sikh separatist, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, on its soil, prompting a furious response from New Delhi and provoking a diplomatic fallout between the two countries. India has vehemently denied involvement in Nijjar’s murder.

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