Finish Him, Brother

The inside story of how two alleged murder plots brought India, the US and Canada to a diplomatic crisis. By Matthew Campbell

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Finish him brother. The inside story of how two alleged
murder plots brought India, the U S. And Canada to
a diplomatic crisis by Matthew Campbell, read aloud by Mark Leedorf. One.
The lawyer was being watched Gerpetwant Singh. Panoun's schedule was predictable,

(00:22):
a regular commute in Queens between his law office and
his home, along with visits to a gym and a cafe.
For the men who began tailing him in the spring
of twenty twenty three, getting a sense of his routine
was easy. It helped, too, that Panoon was easy to spot,
in his mid fifties, with a thick gray beard and
an ink black turban marks of his Sikh faith. From

(00:43):
a short distance away, the surveillance team took photos of
him walking out of his house entering his car, cooling
down after a workout. Half a world away from New York,
Nikil Gupta was waiting eagerly. Gupta was a medium time
New Delhi hustler with links to the drug trade, according
to legal filings, who for several weeks had been in
regular contact with an officer from India's main foreign intelligence agency,

(01:07):
The research and Analysis Wing Raw. Federal prosecutors alleged that
the spy had offered a deal. He would make a
criminal case against Gupta go away. If Gupta helped resolve
a delicate matter overseas, nobody will ever bother you again,
the officer promised. Now Gupta was attempting to fulfill his
end of the bargain. Panun was a key figure in

(01:30):
the Kalistan movement, a campaign to create an independent Sikh
homeland centered on the Indian state of Punjab. The Indian
government regards advocacy for Kalistan as an unacceptable threat to
its sovereignty and has charged the movement's leaders, including Panun,
with terrorism and other criminal offenses. Yet Western law enforcement

(01:50):
agencies have generally declined to act against the campaigners, and
as a US citizen, Panun was free to continue his
work organizing protest marches and broad casting speeches on social media.
By May twenty twenty three, Gupta and his Raw handler
were allegedly seeking to silence him permanently. Late that month,
filing say Gupta asked to contact in the US to

(02:14):
connect him with a contract killer who could take Panun out.
Several days later, Gupta spoke on the phone with his contact,
urging him to finish him. Brother, finish him, don't take
too much time. Soon, Gupta was receiving photos of Panun
going about his daily life. He sent his handler regular updates,
subsequently cited in court documents that emphasized he understood the

(02:36):
need for expediency. Spoke with the NY group. Gupta texted,
told them they have to discharge Panun as soon as possible. Then,
on the night of June eighteenth, twenty twenty three, the
raw officer sent Gupta a video clip which showed a
bullet ridden body slumped in the cab of a pickup truck.
The victim was Hardeep sing Nijjar, a friend of Panun's

(02:58):
and a fellow leader in the Khanistan movement. Hours earlier,
two masked gunmen had ambush Niger as he departed a
temple in a suburb of Vancouver, shooting him thirty four times.
Gupta immediately forwarded the video to his contact in New York,
filing say after the murder in Canada, Gupta warned, Panun
will be more cautious, so we should not give them

(03:20):
the chance, any chance. Gupta said he wanted results if
he is not alone, there are two guys with him
in the meeting, or something put everyone down. Within weeks
of that message, Gupta and his handler's alleged pursuit of
Panun would be brought to the attention of the highest
levels of the US government. Gupta has denied wrongdoing. According

(03:42):
to people familiar with the matter, US intelligence agencies assessed
that the operation had probably been sanctioned by senior figures
in New Delhi, potentially including members of Prime Minister Narendra
Modi's inner circle. An extraordinary gamble. The idea that Indian
officials would even contemplate killing a US citizen on the
streets of New York stunned people in the White House

(04:05):
and the State Department who'd done everything in their power
to court the world's most populous country. The government of
Canada was facing an equally challenging set of problems, how
to demand accountability for Niger's killing, which security officials separately
concluded was directed by elements of the Indian state, and
how to avoid further violence against Canadians, whom India saw

(04:26):
as threats. Over the ensuing months, investigators in Washington, New York, London,
and Ottawa worked to unravel what they believed to be
a deadly Indian intelligence operation unfolding in North America and
to ensure that nothing of its kind was ever attempted again.
These would be delicate tasks with any foreign nation. They

(04:46):
were devilishly complex, with India a rising economic superpower that
Western governments are counting on to offset China. This account
of the targeting of Panun and Niger and the geopolitical
crisis that followed is based on legal filings and government documents,
as well as interviews with people with knowledge of the situation,
almost all of whom asked not to be identified due

(05:07):
to the sensitivity of the topic. Attorneys representing Gupta didn't
respond to requests for comment. In a twenty twenty three
petition to the Supreme Court of India, he said that
he was a hapless victim caught in the crossfire of
geopolitics and that the allegations against him were a case
of mistaken identity. The filing called it an absurdity that

(05:27):
Gupta would be engaged in alleged covert operations and assassinations
on US soil when he has no connections or business
in the country. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs didn't
respond to a detailed request for comment on this story.
In the past, Modi's government has called allegations that it
was involved in the killing of Niger absurd. In Panun's case,

(05:49):
it has responded more equivocally, setting up an inquiry committee
to investigate in consultation with the US. Foreign assassinations are
a tool in some global powers strategic artisnols US. Administrations
of both parties have frequently conducted targeted killings in the
Muslim world and more recently, the Caribbean and Pacific, while

(06:09):
deaths from bombs, bullets or poison have been attributed to
Russia or Israel. Modi, for his part, has suggested that
India is entitled to hunt down those that considers enemies.
Last April, he addressed a crowd in Maharashtra state. After
boasting about his country's economic achievements, he came to the
topic of security, alluding to terrorist attacks in Mumbai in

(06:31):
two thousand and eight, which saw a Pakistani based group
kill more than one hundred and sixty people. He noted
that previous Indian governments would send dossiers when they wanted
to bring enemies to justice that was over, Modi said,
today India eliminates terrorists on their home turf. Two. There
are twenty million to twenty five million Sikhs in India,

(06:54):
representing less than two percent of the population, unlike Hindus,
who far outnumber them their monotheistic believing in a single
divine being whose presence manifests equally for all. Yet, despite
their modest numbers, Sikhs have played an outsized role in
India's history, marked especially by a series of late twentieth
century crises. Amid demands for greater autonomy, Some turned to

(07:18):
violence in the early nineteen eighties, staging bloody attacks on
government officials and civilians. Then, in June nineteen eighty four,
the military began Operation Blue Star, an assault on separatists
who'd installed themselves in the holiest Sikh site, the Golden
Temple in Amritsar. To the government of the day, led
by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the raid was essential to

(07:40):
protect the integrity of the Indian state. To many Sikhs,
it was a desecration of a sacred shrine. According to
official figures, about five hundred and seventy five people were killed,
but Sikh groups put the total much higher. What came
several months later was no less traumatic. On the morning
of October thirty firstnineteen eighty four, Gandhi left her residence

(08:02):
in New Delhi for a TV interview. As she walked
past a guard post, two members of her security staff
both seek opened fire and killed her. Gandhi was struck
by dozens of bullets. According to prosecutors, the bodyguards were
seeking vengeance for the events in Amritsar. Riots erupted across India,
escalating to scenes of brutal violence. Some Sikhs were burned alive,

(08:25):
Others were pulled from buses and motorbikes and savagely beaten
by mobs. Officials in Gandhi's Congress party were accused of
encouraging the attacks, for example, by distributing voter lists that
helped assailants identify Sikh's addresses. Thousands died in the years
that followed. Many Sikhs decided to join a growing diaspora,

(08:46):
particularly in the US, the UK, and Canada, which today
has a seek population of about eight hundred thousand, by
far the largest outside India. Some immigrants pursued violence against
the Indian state, including the men response for the bombing
of Air India Flight one eighty two, a Boeing seven
forty seven that exploded over the Atlantic in nineteen eighty five,

(09:07):
killing three hundred and twenty nine passengers and crew, one
of the deadliest terrorist attacks in history. The event carries
a significance in India's collective memory that's often compared to
the effect September eleventh had on the US. The suspected
masterminds who lived in Canada largely avoided prison time, with
the leader of a later public inquiry saying the investigation

(09:29):
was hamstrung by error and incompetence. A far larger number
of the Sikhs who departed built normal lives, integrating into
their new societies. The flames of Khalistan activism never died out, however,
and Panun and Nijar, members of a generation that experienced
the nineteen eighties crises as children, became leaders in the

(09:49):
campaign in adulthood. The name of the hypothetical state is
drawn from Kalsa, a term for the Sikh community. They
spent much of their time delivering speeches at temple means,
meetings and protests. They also began making plans to hold
referendums among overseas Sikh communities asking voters to declare their
support for independence. These referendums would be purely symbolic and

(10:13):
hardly reliable indicators, given that the likeliest people to vote
would have the strongest feelings on the issue. Moreover, seek
nationalism in India itself was marginal, and Sikhs were well
represented among the country's elite. The Prime Minister from two
thousand four to twenty fourteen, Monmohan Singh was a member
of the faith, and under Modi, Sikhs have continued to

(10:34):
serve at the highest levels of the military and civil service.
In other words, the chances were remote that Nijer Panun
and their small band of fellow activists could seriously threaten
the Indian state. Nonetheless, Indian policymakers were intensely interested in
their activities, especially as Modi consolidated power. One Western diplomat

(10:55):
recalls being surprised by his Indian counterparts absolute laser focus
on on the Khalistan movement. The campaign ought to be
a third order preoccupation at most, but it is utterly
first order for them, the diplomat says. Some observers saw
a cynical political motive. By insisting the movement was a
genuine threat, Mody and his lieutenants could portray themselves as

(11:18):
defenders of the Hindu majority. But their anxiety was also
rooted in real historical events the killing of Indira Gandhi
in the Air India bombing, along with the large number
of less publicized attacks, as well as an understandable fear
in a nation of enormous diversity of the notion that
any part could break away. Niger, who had been living

(11:39):
in Canada since nineteen ninety seven and became a citizen
ten years later, was a particular focus of their attention.
By his account, he'd been arrested and tortured as a
young man in Punjab during a police round up of
Sikh youths. In exile, he built a significant following and
in twenty eighteen became president of a large temple, go

(12:00):
Urunanak Sik Gurdwara near Vancouver. According to people with knowledge
of the matter, Indian law enforcement agencies frequently contacted their
Canadian counterparts to insist that Niger was involved in terrorism
and demand they act against him. In twenty nineteen, the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police or RCMP, detained him for questioning

(12:21):
about Indian claims that he had a role in an
impending attack, but nothing in the evidence India presented, the
people say, met the standard for criminal charges in Canada,
let alone for extradition. To press their case, officials in
New Delhi frequently sent clippings from Indian media, which was
rife with lurid stories about Niger's alleged involvement in violence,

(12:43):
instead of providing what the process required, hard evidence obtained
without coercion that would stand up in a Western courtroom.
When that didn't work, the People say, the Indians suggested
that Canadian police find a way to concoct the necessary evidence.
The result was mutual. Incomprehension to law enforcement agencies in Canada,

(13:03):
Niger was an activist unless India could persuasively demonstrate otherwise.
To Indian police and their political overseers, he was a terrorist,
as the country formally designated him in twenty twenty. The
conventional wisdom in New Delhi was that this standoff reflected
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's domestic interests, specifically his desire to

(13:23):
court seek voters who are a meaningful factor in Canadian elections.
Similar political incentives didn't apply to Washington, though, and when
the Indian government sought action against Khalistan campaigners in the US,
the response was much the same as in Canada. Panun,
like Nijar, was listed as a terrorist by Indian authorities,
and they considered the group he was part of, Seeks

(13:45):
for Justice, to be an unlawful organization. The group's messaging
was often inflammatory, including posters calling on supporters to burn
the Indian constitution and Balkanize India. Yet in Queens Panun
lived on dad molested, as did fellow activists elsewhere in
the country. Regardless of India's demands, he and Nijer were

(14:06):
going to continue their campaign unless events intervened. Three wiry
and fit with a square jaw and thick brown hair.
Nikhil Gupta described himself in his twenty twenty three Indian
court petition as a law abiding, middle class businessman. This
was almost certainly not the whole story. Since twenty sixteen,

(14:28):
and possibly before, according to legal filings and law enforcement officials,
Gupta had been at least talking about brokering deliveries of
narcotics and weapons across borders. He traveled extensively, visiting Dubai,
New York, Los Angeles, and Central Asia, and claimed in
conversations to have links to an international network of drug traffickers.

(14:49):
Gupta's US lawyers have said that government evidence of such
statements is uncorroborated. For most Western intelligence agencies today, it
would be unusual to rely on some with a comparable background.
Such people are often untrustworthy, untrained in operational security, and
liable to attract the attention of law enforcement. But in India,

(15:10):
security officials tend to be more experienced working with the underworld.
Many of the men who've headed RAW started out as
police officers, as did the country's most prominent intelligence official,
National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. By Gupta's later account, described
in government records of an interview with US investigators, the
events that put him in contact with an RAW officer

(15:32):
began in twenty twenty one, when he was informed that
he was expected in court regarding a robbery he denied
having anything to do with. Gupta has disputed certain aspects
of these records, telling a US court that neither investigator
brought up the allegations in this case during the interview.
He said he asked friends if they knew anyone who
could help clear his name. Eventually, he was contacted by

(15:54):
a man calling himself Amanat, who indicated he could assist.
It's not clear whether Gupta knew Amanat's real identity at
this point, or whether Gupta understood that he worked for RAW.
In Gupta's telling, Amanat wore a mask and hat to
their first meeting and shared almost nothing about himself, but
by early May twenty twenty three, they were communicating over

(16:15):
WhatsApp on a regular basis. Anxiety over Kalistan activism was
then running high. That March, police in Punjab had undertaken
a massive manhunt to arrest an advocate, whom they accused
of a range of crimes. In response, overseas, Sikh groups
staged rowdy demonstrations at the Indian consulate in San Francisco.

(16:36):
Protesters broke windows and spray painted a wall. According to
people familiar with the bilateral relationship, Indian officials were frustrated
by what they saw as a tepid u s response
to the incident. In their view, one of the people
says it was only a matter of time before an
Indian diplomat was hurt or even killed. For years, Nijar,
who was married and had two sons, had been receiving

(16:59):
phone call from unknown numbers, the voices on the other
end claiming that he and his family would be killed
unless he stopped his campaign. Then, in July twenty twenty two,
police arrived unannounced at his home. According to a person
who was present, they explained that they had reason to
believe Niger's life was in danger. His English was shaky,
so his son translated the warning into Punjabi. As the

(17:22):
officers continued, they noticed Niger was chuckling. I don't think
he's getting it, one of them said. In fact, Niger
understood what he was being told, but his attitude was fatalistic.
You don't walk on this path thinking that you're going
to live a very long time, he explained through his son.
Similar warnings were being given to other Kadistan activists in Canada.

(17:45):
The police told Niger they couldn't offer more specific information
or provide him with protection. They nonetheless wanted to keep
in touch, and Niger began meeting regularly with RCMP officers
and agents from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service CSIS, the
country's principal spy agency. Still, he refused to scale back

(18:06):
his activism, reasoning that if someone wanted him dead, he
was having a real impact. Khalistan campaigners kept in constant
touch online, and when one of their number was killed
in the spring of twenty twenty three, Nijar learned of
it almost immediately. According to the Indian government, Paramjit Singh
Pandhoar was the leader of a militant outfit known as

(18:27):
the Khalistan Commando Force, and he'd been designated a terrorist
under the same law as Niger and Panun. On May sixth,
two men on a motorbike ambushed Panhoar in Pakistan, where
he lived, and shot him dead. No one publicly claimed
responsibility for his assassination, but to Nijar and his compatriots
what had happened was obvious. India had killed him. The

(18:50):
same day, the Raw Operative guptanu As Amanat allegedly texted
him a message that would later be cited in federal court.
There was a target in New York York, Ammanat wrote,
we will hit our all targets, Gupta replied, mangling his text.
Less than a week later, the Raw Operative assured Gupta

(19:11):
that the criminal case against him had already been taken
care of. Soon, Gupta was discussing his assignment with the
contact in the US. According to legal filings, Gupta understood
this man to be a Colombian cocaine supplier. They had
known each other since twenty thirteen and had previously discussed
drug and weapons deals, though never to the point of completion.

(19:32):
In their twenty twenty three conversations, the filings alleged, Gupta
explained that he needed help arranging for Panun to be killed.
The contact indicated that he was open to the proposal
and asked for more details, including whether Gupta was willing
to pay his asking price one hundred thousand dollars. Gupta
sent screenshots of the exchange to Amanat, who replied, OK,

(19:55):
the whole money will be paid within twenty four hours
after the work is done. With the price agreed upon,
the contact said he would speak to his associates about
the next steps, but the contact and his associates weren't
who Gupta thought they were. Four Gupta had been on
the radar of the US Drug Enforcement Administration for the

(20:15):
better part of a decade, according to legal filings, on
at least two occasions in the previous eight years, he'd
allegedly discussed organizing large shipments of heroine, boasting that he
had contacts in Afghanistan and the ability to move drugs
into countries including South Africa and Thailand. These conversations had
made their way back to the agency, but Gupta never

(20:36):
followed through with the deliveries and wasn't charged now though
he'd made a mistake. The contact he'd allegedly asked to
help him carry out a murder in New York was
a paid DEA source. When the source reported the plot,
a new investigation began, initially landing with a joint DEA
and New York Police Department unit known as Red Rum,

(20:57):
an homage to the Shining that focuses on violent drug crimes.
It was soon clear this wouldn't be a routine case.
The first indication was the target for the hit, a
political campaigner whose capture the Indian government had been seeking
for years. Notably, India had previously asked for a red
notice on Panum from Interpol, a kind of all points

(21:20):
bulletin to the world's police forces. Interpol declined, with an
internal panel ruling that New Delhi hadn't provided sufficient evidence
linking Panun to criminal activity. Another sign of a political
dimension was Gupta's seeming concern about an upcoming visit to
Washington by Modi, which would include a state dinner at
the White House. On a call with the DEA source

(21:41):
in early June, Gupta cautioned that our Prime Minister Modi
is visiting America on twentieth. At the time of our
prime minister visit, it's not good. Investigators couldn't tell whether
these and other comments by Gupta meant he really was
working for some part of the Indian government, but they
were alarmed enough to escalate the matter to the Department

(22:02):
of Justice's National Security Division in Washington. Agents also approached
Panun to warn him that he was being targeted and
ask for a small measure of cooperation. They wanted to
conduct mock surveillance of his daily routine and send the
pictures to Gupta to convince him that the men he
was talking to in New York had eyes on the lawyer.

(22:22):
Panun didn't object, and on June fourth, the DEA source
sent Gupta one of the images, explaining that Panun would
be killed as soon as an advanced payment arrived. Soon
after that, the source put Gupta in direct contact with
the supposed hitman, who was in fact an undercover NYPD officer.
The next step for investigators was to establish Gupta's seriousness.

(22:44):
Amanat encouraged him to move quickly, filing say messaging him
on June ninth, a Friday, let's activate the team and
get it done this weekend. The same day, Gupta told
the undercover officer that someone would be in touch to
deliver a parcel. Sure enough, just after ten a m.
New York time, the hit man received a call from

(23:05):
some one working with Gupta, who said he had fifteen
K to give to you. They met later that day
in the undercover officer's car. According to filings, not far
from Penn Station in Manhattan, a stack of hundreds, complimented
with a single one dollar bill in the style of
a South Asian wedding gift, changed hands. Several days later,

(23:25):
the U. S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of
New York filed a brief sealed indictment of Gupta on
murder for higher charges. Then, filings say he sent a
message that made matters significantly more complex. Almost from the
beginning of his dialog about Pannoon with the d E
A source, Gupta had suggested that there could be more jobs.

(23:45):
On June fourteenth, he hinted at where the next one
could take place. We will be needing one good team
in Canada, he wrote. Five hours after Gupta's message about
a target in Canada, another Tistan activist, Aftar Singh Khanda,
died in a British hospital. The official cause of death

(24:06):
was acute myeloid leukemia, a blood cancer that can advance
with terrifying speed, and there was no evidence of foul play. Nonetheless,
Kanda's friends and family were suspicious as far as they knew.
He'd been healthy, and he was the second prominent Khalistan
campaigner to die suddenly in as many months after Panjwar
in Pakistan. Some Canadian Sikhs feared that Niger would be next.

(24:31):
On Friday, June sixteenth, one of his friends and fellow activists,
Monandur Singh called an evening meeting at the Guru Nanak Gurdwara.
He shut the door and turned to the others. He's
number one on their list, Singh said, of Niger, who
was also in the room. They're going to kill him
and then we're all going to say we should have
done something. When not working on Kalistan advocacy, Niger ran

(24:54):
a plumbing business and his movements were predictable. The group
resolved to begin working on new secure protocols for him,
starting on Sunday. Less than forty eight hours later. The
next day, Niger tried to reach Panun, his counterpart in Queen's.
The two men finally connected by phone late in the evening.
Niger said Canadian security agencies had warned him once more

(25:16):
that his life was in danger. He was scheduled to
meet with c SIS agents again in a few days.
Yet his concern was for Panun. Your name is also
out there, so you'd better be careful. Niger said. This
wasn't news to Panun, but he thanked Niger for the
heads up and asked, so, what are you doing. Niger laughed,

(25:36):
much as he had when receiving his first warning from
police the previous year. I'm going to continue, he said,
I'm not going to disappear. Niger spent much of the
next day Sunday at the Gurdwara, meeting supporters and giving
a speech warning that he might not survive. To continue
his campaign just before eight thirty p m. He climbed
into his gray Dodge pick up and began driving out

(25:58):
of the parking lot. As he approached the exit, a
white sedan stopped in front of him. At that moment,
two masked men emerged from the edge of the property.
They approached Niger's vehicle, raised their guns and started shooting,
shattering the driver's side window. Then they fled down a
residential street and into a park. It was a warm
late spring evening and the area was busy with families

(26:21):
out for strolls and a group playing soccer. When they
heard the shots, some of the players took off after
the assailants. They almost caught up to the slower of
the two in the middle of the park, but as
they got close, he turned around and pointed his weapon
at them. They briefly stopped, giving the man time to
run ahead into a cul de sac, where he and
the other gunmen entered a second sedan and sped away.

(26:43):
By the time police arrived, the killers were long gone.
To the d e A and others in the U
S government, Niger's killing provided more proof that Gupta was
serious and that Kalistan activists were at extreme risk The
following day, according to filings, Gupta had a call with
the officer posing as a hitman. He explained that Niger

(27:04):
had also been the target, and we have so many targets.
The good news is this now no need to wait.
In another call, this one with his initial contact the
DEA source, Gupta said, we have to finish four jobs
by the end of June, starting with Panun. Agents from
the FBI, which joined the investigation as its significance became clear,

(27:26):
began contacting other Khalistan campaigners across the US, warning them
of threats to their safety. Meanwhile, the DEA started working
on a plan to arrest Gupta, which would mean somehow
getting him out of India. Investigator's preference was to lure
him to a meeting in the US, but he was
reluctant to make the trip. Instead, they began working on

(27:46):
a backup plan. Putting together such an operation begins with
a kind of ven diagram. One circle encompasses nations that
have favorable extradition treaties with Washington. The other contains places
where a defendant might be persuaded to travel without raising suspicion.
In Gupta's case, the circles overlapped most promisingly in the
Czech Republic. The DEA source told Gupta that if they

(28:10):
wanted to keep doing business, they needed to speak in person,
and on June nineteenth, Gupta agreed to a meeting in Prague.
He booked a ticket via Istanbul, departing ten days later.
In the interim, he continued pressuring the supposed hitman to
take Panun out, keep eyes at his house, his office,
and the cafe he used to visit, Gupta told the
undercover officer. According to filings, two DEA investigators from New York,

(28:35):
Mark Franks and Jose Sandebal, flew to Prague ahead of
Gupta's arrival late in the day on June thirtieth. They
drove to the Vatslav Javel airport with Czech police, who
told them to stay in the vehicle. Gupta was disembarking
from his flight, rolling a small suitcase with a neck
pillow clip to the handle. Plain clothes officers stopped him
inside the terminal. One of the Czech personnel texted an

(28:57):
update to the waiting Americans. Your men has just been arrested.
Gupta was taken to a small room where police took
a vivophone and two iPhones from him, with Gupta providing
the pass codes. He was then handcuffed and led out
of the building and into a car where Franks and
Sandibal were ready for him. Still in cuffs, he took
a seat between the pair. Exactly what Gupta said in

(29:20):
the car is in dispute. What is clear, however, is
that the group investigating him considered the day a success. Later,
one of the prosecutors assigned to the case texted a
group chat that included Franks and Sandibal to ask is
he talking. Franks replied, we had limited time. He did,
but he was playing f F games. We think he

(29:41):
will ultimately cooperate. Another prosecutor messaged the chain. Did we
grab phones, yes, Sandibal wrote, he gave the codes to
unlock them to the arrest team. Outstanding. The prosecutor responded,
We'll be right back with finish him. Brother. Welcome back

(30:02):
to finish him brother six. In Canada, meanwhile, Niger's murder
was national news. Initially, intelligence agencies told Trudeau there was
no compelling evidence the crime was politically motivated, according to
testimony he gave at a later public inquiry, it was
more likely. Instead, they said to have been gang related

(30:24):
or criminal related. At the time, there was not an
obvious immediate international nexus to this. Trudeau recalled RCMP detectives
in British Columbia, however, viewed the situation differently. There was
no evidence that Niger had criminal links, and he was
well known to the agency for his activism and for
the Indian government's enmity toward it. His fellow Kalistan campaigners, meanwhile,

(30:49):
were convinced the shooting had been ordered. In New Delhi,
minutes after arriving at the scene of the killing, Niger's
friend Monan dur Singh had told a crowd that had gathered,
make no mistake, this is a political assassination. As this
allegation circulated in the media, Trudeau's advisers asked security agencies
to undertake a fresh assessment. While that effort was underway,

(31:10):
in late July, according to people familiar with the situation,
the government received word that the UK, one of Canada's
partners in the Five Eyes intelligence sharing Alliance, had obtained
some relevant information. The matter had to be treated with
extreme sensitivity. The British intelligence would need to be delivered
by hand, kept off electronic systems, and distributed to only

(31:31):
a tiny number of Canadian officials, their names approved by London.
In advance. With those conditions agreed upon, a British intelligence
officer carried the file into a government building in Ottawa.
It was a summary and analysis of conversations intercepted by
the UK's Signals Intelligence Agency the government Communications headquarters between

(31:51):
individuals whom British analysts believed were working on behalf of
the Indian government. Earlier in the year, they'd talked about
plans to attack three targets, Niger, Panun, and Kanda, the
activist who died in a British hospital. The document didn't
name the people whose conversations had been tapped or Niger's assassins,
but the implication was clear to the analysts there was

(32:13):
a strong chance he'd been murdered in an operation directed
by the Indian state. Within an hour of receiving the
British document, Trudeau's National Security and Intelligence adviser, Jody Thomas,
arranged to brief her boss, The Prime Minister, and a
few close advisers, gathered in a sensitive compartmented Information facility
or SKIFF, a secure conference room designed to be impervious

(32:36):
to eavesdropping, Thomas put the file in front of Trudeau
to read. He betrayed little emotion and pivoted quickly to
the next steps, asking for options on how Canada could respond.
Over the next several days, Canadian security agencies corroborated the
initial intelligence. They also received another British wire tap, this
one capturing a conversation referring to how Niger had been

(32:58):
successfully eliminated. The consensus among Trudeau and his team was
that the government needed to confront India with what it
had learned. It also began to coordinate closely on the
matter with the Biden administration. By late summer, officials in
Ottawa and Washington understood that they were looking at two
sides of the same coin, a murder in British Columbia

(33:18):
and an attempt to arrange one in Queens In New York.
The DEA and FBI were trying to learn more about Gupta,
who remained in a Czech prison while extradition proceedings progressed
from the start. One of their priorities was to identify
the person directing his activities, The man Gupta knew as Amanat,
with whom he'd exchanged at least five hundred WhatsApp and

(33:40):
signal messages in the two months before his arrest. Once
they had access to Amanat's contact information, investigators ran through
various government databases. They got a hit. A matching phone
number had been listed on a US visa application by
an Indian flight attendant. It belonged to her husband, a
man named Vicosh Yadav. There was a further clue in

(34:02):
the Gazette of India, a government publication that lists official appointments.
A twenty thirteen edition had recorded the resignation of A.
Vikashyadov from a role in the Central Reserve Police Force,
a paramilitary organization that supports law enforcement. The announcement said
he was leaving his post after being selected as a
senior field officer in India's Cabinet Secretariat in New Delhi.

(34:25):
The nature of this vague position is widely understood. It's
a euphemism for working at raw seven. Yadav was born
and raised in Pranpura, a village on the hot plains
of Haryana State. He joined the RPF in two thousand
and nine when he was twenty four. In a photo
obtained by US prosecutors, from a search of his Gmail account,

(34:47):
he looked strikingly handsome, wearing a trim camouflage uniform over
his muscular frame. Despite the secretive nature of his intelligence work,
he generated a modest paper trail, including a case regarding
the terms of his employment that he filed with the
Civil Service Tribunal. The filings included his home address in
a middle class neighborhood not far from Raw headquarters. Investigators.

(35:10):
Increasing certainty that Yadav worked with Gupta to carry out
a murder in New York created a significant problem for
Joe Biden's White House. The administration was investing heavily in
its relationship with India, not least by hosting Mody's state
visit to Washington in June twenty twenty three. Jake Sullivan,
Biden's National security advisor, and Kurt Campbell, his top emissary

(35:32):
for Asia, had come to see New Delhi as a
cornerstone of long term plans to contain China. This strategy
wasn't without its critics, since India isn't a formal or
even informal US ally. Some in the State Department in
Congress saw the decision to treat it similarly to one
as over optimistic, presuming a convergence of interests and values

(35:53):
that didn't necessarily exist. The White House learned of the
developing PANUN investigation not long after Modis's According to people
familiar with the discussions, Policymaker's first question was obvious. How
high did the plot go? The people say it was
the assessment of U S intelligence agencies, albeit with a
degree of conjecture that it had likely been authorized by

(36:15):
senior figures in Modi's government, potentially including Minister of Home
Affairs Ahmed Shah, whose one of Mody's closest allies, and
Samant Gol, the head of RAW at the time. The
leaders of the Indian security state have a reputation as micromanagers,
and it was highly implausible, in the view of US
analysts that such a plan would have proceeded without a

(36:37):
go ahead from at least some of them. Shah and
Goal didn't respond to requests for comment. Administration officials were
astonished by the apparent plot, the people say, and furious.
The US drone strikes that began during the War on
Terror and continued in more limited fashion under Biden, occurred
largely in combat zones or little governed places such as

(36:58):
Somalia and Yemen, not on the soil of friendly democracies.
Attempting to murder a US citizen in an American city
would be a fundamental breach of trust at any time,
and Modi had just been feted with a four hundred
guest state dinner that very day. Yadav sent a message
to Gupta telling him that if his contacts in New
York were able to determine that Panun was at home,

(37:21):
it will be a go ahead from US. What was more,
the operation had been remarkably amateurish, penetrated by the DEA
almost from the outset, and directed by a handler who
used a traceable phone. Some observers might note, well, the
United States does this all over the world, one of
the people says, but we don't do it in India. Nonetheless,

(37:43):
foreign policy officials soon determined that the American response would
be muted, with no strong measures like sanctions on Indian personnel,
and would be communicated entirely in private, at least until
court proceedings made it impossible to keep the matter quiet.
The message the White House delivered vi CIA Director William Burns,
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and other senior staff

(38:06):
was straightforward. First, the Panune plot was unacceptable, and the
US needed to commitment that nothing like it would happen again. Second,
India needed to determine who in its hierarchy was behind
the operation and hold them accountable. If those conditions were met,
the case would be treated as a challenge that could
be overcome, rather than a reason to fundamentally reconsider the

(38:28):
US India relationship. In response, the people familiar with the
discussions recall Indian officials indicated that they understood the depth
of American displeasure, even if they didn't accept responsibility. They
were also intensely curious about how US investigators had managed
to obtain so much evidence. Thomas, Trudeau's National security adviser,

(38:49):
made her own trip to New Delhi around the same
time she'd secured a meeting with Doval, her Indian counterpart.
Before the Canadian government received the British intelligence about Niger's killing,
one of its goals was to work toward a reset
of the country's security relations after years of tensions over
Kaalistan activism. But by the time Thomas landed in India

(39:09):
in August carrying a burner phone and only paper documents
she had prepared for a very different kind of discussion,
according to public testimony and people with knowledge of the conversation,
she and Doval sat down in a private meeting room,
facing each other in ornate arm chairs. Despite an outsized
reputation he's regularly described as the Indian James Bond, Doval

(39:32):
is unusually short, and Thomas towered over him. After some pleasantries,
he began complaining about Canada's policies. His objections were familiar.
People designated as terrorists in India were living in Canadian suburbs.
Trudeau was unwilling to do anything about them because he
depended on Sikh votes, and when India sent extradition requests,

(39:53):
his government failed to act. You hide behind free speech
and tolerate hate, Doval declared. He spoke for perhaps forty minutes,
going well past the time allotted for the entire meeting.
When he finished, opening the floor to Thomas, she began
to read from a script. Her remarks were intended to
make clear how much she knew about Nigger's murder without

(40:14):
giving away intelligence sources or compromising the police investigation. This
was a criminal act on Canadian soil. She said, we
have evidence that leads us to conclude that India was
directly involved. We are investigating, and we anticipate making arrests.
While she said Canada had no intention of going public,
she noted that in Ottawa, as in Washington, sensitive information

(40:37):
tends to leak one way or another. This will come out,
she warned. Thomas proposed an alternative. The Canadian government was
willing to work with India to get to the truth
of what had occurred, but Doval wouldn't engage with the suggestion.
The people with knowledge of the conversation say he tried
to take control of the discussion, insisting they needed to

(40:57):
leave for a larger gathering of security and feign policy officials.
Thomas repeated her script there, then again in a separate
meeting with India's External Affairs Minister Subramanyam Jaishankar. After hearing
Thomas out, Jaishankar's response was blunt. This did not happen,
he declared. Biden and Trudeau flew to New Delli in

(41:18):
September for a meeting of the Group of twenty major economies.
Each spoke privately with Mody, with Biden saying his government
knew about the role of Indian personnel in the panun
case and Trudeau doing the same with respect to Nigir.
That knowledge was still being closely guarded, but shortly after
Trudeau's return to Ottawa, his office received word that The

(41:39):
Globe and Mail was close to breaking the story. On
September eighteenth, he delivered an unprecedented statement in the Canadian Parliament.
The government, Trudeau said, was actively pursuing credible allegations of
a potential link between agents of the government of India
and the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep seeing Niger.
He called such an act contrary to the fundamental rules

(42:01):
by which free, open, and democratic societies conduct themselves. India's
reaction was predictably explosive. Mody's government accused Canada of permitting
a range of illegal activities, including murders, human trafficking, and
organized crime. It also threatened to revoke the immunity of
more than forty Canadian diplomats and suspended all visa processing

(42:22):
for Canadian citizens. In Washington, foreign policy officials watched the
unfolding dispute with dismay. Some felt that by going public
in such a dramatic fashion, whatever his reasons Trudeau had
let domestic political considerations take precedent over wise foreign policy.
Others were more sympathetic, after all, the intended victim in

(42:43):
the US was still alive, Canada had a body eight.
As Trudeau's allegations sparked an international crisis, Gupta remained in
prison in the Czech Republic. The only public charges against
him had been detailed, and the brief indictment filed in
New York work before his arrest, which was unsealed after
he was taken into custody, But federal prosecutors in Manhattan

(43:06):
were working on a much more comprehensive filing which would
detail the alleged conspiracy to kill Panun, including Gupta's interactions
with Yadav, his raw handler. Once it was made public,
the discrete approach favored by the Biden administration would be over.
The National Security Council had been convening regular meetings on
the issue, with representatives present from a range of government agencies,

(43:29):
including the Justice Department. The resulting dynamic was complicated for
both the legal and foreign policy sides of the administration
by long standing practice, at least outside of Donald Trump's
time in office. The direction of federal criminal proceedings is
determined solely by the DOJ. Formerly, its representatives were there
to provide basic information about the Panun investigations progress and

(43:52):
certainly not to take suggestions. But in this case everyone
involved understood that the department's work could have significant effects
on a bilateral relationship the White House was determined to protect.
The revised indictment against Gupta was unsealed in late November.
By this point, investigators had known Yadov's identity for months,

(44:12):
and he was arguably the central actor in the government's narrative,
the person who directed a plot to assassinate on us soil,
an attorney and political activist. Prosecutors quoted extensively from WhatsApp
messages they said Gupta had received from him, issuing specific
instructions on how and when Panun should be pursued. Yet
Yadav himself wasn't being charged, only Gupta, which also meant

(44:36):
that under DOJ policy, the raw operative couldn't be named.
He was described instead as an Indian government employee, without
reference to which agency he worked for. Yadov's lawyer, R. K.
Hundu declined to comment on queries sent by Bloomberg BusinessWeek
beyond saying that it appears an imaginary story is being made.

(44:57):
The administration had warned India that an ex expanded indeamond
was coming and its response was measured. A spokesman for
the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi said the
US had shared some inputs that impinge on our national
security interests as well. As a result, the Indian government
was setting up a high level inquiry committee to examine
the matter. It was roughly what Thomas had proposed to

(45:20):
her Indian counterparts, only to be angrily dismissed before Trudeau
went public. In Congress, India's announcement was greeted with skepticism
to members, including Maryland Senator Ben Carden, the chairman of
the Foreign Relations Committee. The Panun case was a signal
that the US approach to Modi had become overly accommodating.
Carden had leverage. Congress had recently been asked to approve

(45:43):
the sale of more than thirty m Q nine drones
to the Indian military. Carden placed a hold on the sale,
freezing its progress. His opposition represented a challenge for the
White House, where officials viewed the drones as a key
plank in security cooperation with India. Administration of FISS lobbied intensely,
warning that delays could doom the transaction and insisting they

(46:05):
would demand accountability for the Pannune plot. The calls from
the White House and the State Department continued for weeks. Finally,
in February twenty twenty four, Cardon agreed to lift his hold.
India would get its drones nine. In Canada, the investigation
into Niger's murder was proceeding along two tracks, finding the

(46:26):
men who'd killed him and determining who'd directed them. Detectives
concluded early in their inquiry that the assassins were hired guns,
almost certainly without political motives themselves. People familiar with the
matter say police worked outward from the crime scene in
the parking lot of the Gurdwara canvassing neighbors for security
camera footage and seeking data from cellular towers. They also

(46:49):
identified the getaway car, a silver two thousand and eight
Toyota Camri. By late twenty twenty three, the RCMP was
closing in on several suspects, all Indian citizens who had
come to Canada on temporary visas. One of them a
man in his early twenties named Amandeep Singh was already
in jail. He'd been arrested near Toronto on November three,

(47:11):
the day before a local wedding that Panun and other
Kalistan activists were expected to attend. In a search, police
found a handgun with a laser sight and an extended
twenty four round magazine that's prohibited in Canada. They took
Singh into custody on firearms charges, and the wedding proceeded
without incident, though Panun decided at the last minute not

(47:32):
to go. Detectives began monitoring the other suspects while they
gathered more evidence, seeking to ensure that none of them
engaged in violence or attempted to leave the country, the
people say. By May twenty twenty four, police were ready
to act, backed by heavily armed tactical teams. Officers arrested
three men in Edmonton, Alberta. Karan Brr, Kamal Prit Singh

(47:55):
and Karan Pret sing all were charged with first degree
murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Later in the month,
Amandeep Singh was charged with the same offenses. The four
haven't yet entered Please Amandeep Singh's lawyer says that his
client will be pleading not guilty to the homicide charges
and that the earlier charges in Ontario have been stayed.

(48:16):
Lawyers for Karen pret Singh and Karen Brr declined to comment.
A lawyer for Kamal prit Singh didn't reply to a
request for comment. As they kept investigating the Niger case,
RCMP detectives were finding evidence of further assassination plots. By
late twenty twenty four, police had learned of more than
a dozen threats to the lives of people in Canada

(48:37):
and were struggling to keep ahead of them. Investigators had
concluded that they originated in part with intelligence collection by
Indian diplomats. As a Trudeau adviser would describe it in
later testimony, This information is shared with senior levels of
the Indian government, who then direct the Commission of Serious
Criminal Activities. Police were confident that at least some of

(48:59):
the people to pasked with carrying out the crimes worked
for Lawrence Bishnoy, a notorious gangster who operates from a
prison in Gujarat. It was an astonishing assessment, alleging that
powerful officials in the government of a major economy were
working with a criminal group to silence enemies on the
other side of the world. In the summer of twenty
twenty four, officials in Ottawa decided they needed to confront

(49:22):
India with the evidence. It quickly became clear, however, that
the Modi government wasn't eager to hear from Canadian law enforcement.
When an RCMP commander made plans to travel to New
Delhi to discuss the issue, he couldn't get a visa.
The same officer then secured a meeting with Indian officials
who were visiting the US. He flew to Washington for

(49:42):
the appointment and was stood up. Trudeau's team had a
final avenue to try. Ajit Daval, the Indian National Security Adviser,
had spoken repeatedly with Thomas and her successor, Natalie Druan
over the previous year. The discussions were cordial, but never
yielded what the Canadians wanted, an agreement for India to
hold an inquiry into Niger's murder, as it was doing

(50:04):
for the Panun case. In public, the Indian government said
Canada hadn't provided specific or relevant evidence about the crime.
In October Duanne traveled to Singapore with the r c
m P commander and a senior diplomat, where they planned
to tell Dval some of what they had learned. The
group gathered in one of the city state's luxury hotels.

(50:24):
At first, according to a person with knowledge of the discussion,
Deval claimed never to have heard of Bishnoi. Then he
dropped the pretense, noting that the gangster had a potent
global network. Drouin and the others presented d'val with two
options for co operation. One India could agree to waive
the immunity of the diplomats, whom Canada believed had links
to violence, allowing them to be questioned. Or two, it

(50:48):
could take responsibility for their actions, including by recalling the
personnel from their posts and pledging to stop targeting dissidents
in Canada. If neither of those was possible, the Canadians
said they would have no choice but to take a
third unilateral path, expelling the diplomats and going public with
their concerns. Dval firmly denied that Indian diplomats were involved

(51:09):
with crime, and emphasized that his government would never admit
any connection to Niger's murder the person says, but he
did appear open to exploring some kind of arrangement that
would allow the two countries to move forward. The discussion
went on for hours, and at its conclusion, Duval declared
this meeting never took place. The next day, a story

(51:30):
about the meeting appeared in the government aligned Hindustan Times.
India has made it clear to Canada that Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau cannot make unsubstantiated charges against the Modi government,
the article began. The Indian position was conveyed to top
security officials and diplomats of Trudeau's government in a third
country on Saturday. From the Canadian perspective, the league was

(51:52):
a betrayal, and on returning home, Juanna and her colleagues
activated the unilateral option. On October fourteenth, the RCMPS held
an extraordinary press conference in Ottawa, which its commissioner said
followed credible and imminent threats to life. Six of India's
diplomats were expelled, including the ambassador, with Canada's Foreign Ministry

(52:12):
calling them persons of interest in the Nijar case. Soon afterward,
a senior Canadian official indicated in a public hearing that
the government believed Shah, the Home Minister, was a key
player in the campaign against Khalistan activists. The Modi government
angrily denied the allegations and expelled an equal number of
Canadian personnel from India. It also called talk of Shaw's

(52:34):
involvement absurd and baseless. As the crisis deepened, an Indian
delegation was in Washington for an update on the Panun case.
In the year that India's internal inquiry had been under way.
People familiar with the matter say it had evolved in
a clear direction, penning responsibility for the targeting of Panun
on Yadav and certainly not on anyone above him in

(52:56):
raw or Modi's inner circle. This clashed with the view
of US intelligence agencies, which had assessed that the operation
had likely been authorized by senior officials. It also defied logic.
Would a relatively junior officer really engage in such a
high risk plan without orders or at least a green
light from his superiors, And how could this rogue officer

(53:18):
have access to the kind of money one hundred thousand
dollars that had been promised as payment for killing Panun.
US prosecutors had obtained Yetov's tax statements, and that amount
was about five times his annual salary. Nonetheless, the Biden
administration was willing to accept India's account. After the delegation's visit,
a State Department spokesman said the US was satisfied with

(53:40):
the cooperation it had received. He noted that the administration
had been informed that the operative identified as Gupta's handler,
who'd been left unnamed by the Justice Department up to
that point, is no longer an employee of the Indian government.
The next day, a new indictment was unsealed by federal
prosecutors in New York. This one charged a second defendant,

(54:02):
vikash yadav ten. Over the past year, the US and
Canada have both moved into new phases of their relationship
with India. After speaking warmly of Mody in the first
months of his new term, Trump has since turned on him,
imposing fifty percent tariffs on Indian goods, ostensibly because of
the country's purchases of Russian oil and in retaliation for

(54:24):
its own import levies. The Panun case, however, does not
appear to be among his grievances. In public comments, Trump
has stayed away from the matter, saying in early September
that apart from disagreements over trade, we get along with
India very well. Trudeau's successor as Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney,
has tried to restore normalcy to interactions with New Delhi.

(54:48):
He and Mody met at the Group of Seven summit
in June, where they agreed to restore severed diplomatic relations.
Some Sikh groups were outraged, but Carney had no real
alternative with Trump's trade wars or pressuring its economy. Canada
needs to develop new markets, and India is one of
the obvious options. Neither North American government, however, can control

(55:09):
what may emerge in criminal proceedings. Preparations continue for the
trial of the four men charged with killing Niger, which
doesn't yet have a scheduled date. Canadian prosecutors don't lay
out their arguments in public ahead of time, so the
details of their case will become clear only when the
preceding begins. It's possible they'll present evidence, they say, ties
the defendant's actions to Indian diplomats or even to specific

(55:32):
officials in New Delhi that could provoke another round of
mutual accusations between Canada and India, threatening the reprochmal being
attempted by Carney. Gupta was extradited to New York in
the spring of twenty twenty four. Since then, he has
been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center, a facility on
the Brooklyn Waterfront that's notorious for its poor conditions. If

(55:54):
convicted on the three charges, he faces murder for higher, conspiracy,
murder for higher, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, he
could be sentenced to decades in federal prison. In the
lead up to his trial, which was recently delayed, his
lawyers attempted unsuccessfully to invalidate swaths of the evidence being
used against him, notably by arguing that the examination of

(56:15):
his phones by Czech police and the transmission of their
contents to the u S constituted a warrantless search. The
DOJ disputed that investigators acted improperly. Panoun, meanwhile, is still
organizing referendums and advocating for the creation of Khalistan. He
is now protected by an armed security team and limits
his movements around New York, driving between essential appointments in

(56:38):
a three car convoy with his bodyguards. He says, however,
that if Indian officials want to kill him, he expects
they'll find a way. I am continuing my campaign Panun vows,
and I will do it until the bullet comes. Yadav
has never publicly responded to his U S indictment and
remains at large. During discussions with the Indian government, people

(57:00):
familiar with the matter say the d o J asked
repeatedly for information on his status and what India planned
to do to facilitate his extradition. The response, they say,
was twofold that the U S hadn't provided enough evidence
to definitively prove his role in the Panun case, and
that whatever Yadav had done, India would deal with them.