A Czech appeals court granted permission for an Indian man charged by the United States for participating in a foiled plot to assassinate a Sikh separatist on US soil to be extradited to America, a decision reported by the Czech news website Seznam Zprávy.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted Nikhil Gupta, the supposed assassin, in November 2023. The DOJ claimed that Gupta, who was an employee of the Indian government, was assigned and funded by an Indian government agency to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, an Indian political activist residing in New York. Gupta was apprehended in Czech Republic in June 2023 upon the request of the United States.
Despite the Czech High Court’s disbelief in the theory that the Indian government subsidized Gupta’s assassination plot, it sanctioned the extradition of Gupta. According to the Court, the idea that a democratic state governed by legal order and international treaties would resort to such means as murder of another state’s citizen on its territory to solve its issues during peacetime is absurd. Despite this outcome, Gupta’s attorneys intend to appeal the decision before the Czech Republic’s Constitutional Court.
Interestingly, Pannun, the target, supports the secession of India’s Punjab state and the establishment of a predominantly Sikh state called Khalistan. The Indian Government classifies him as a terrorist. Gupta’s lawyers argue that Pannun represents a threat to the Republic of India, akin to the threat Osama bin Laden posed to the United States. This statement follows the assassination of a Sikh activist in Canada, after which human rights groups and Canada demanded India probe allegations of its government’s involvement in western countries’ assassinations of pro-Khalistan activists in later part of 2023.
Earlier in January, Gupta’s release from detention in the Czech Republic despite a petition was dismissed by India’s Supreme Court.