Gupta’s lawyers argue he is a law-abiding businessman who has been unfairly caught up in an escalating geopolitical “battle” between the US and Indian governments.
Gupta, who had been held in the Czech Republic, arrived in New York over the weekend, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing the sensitive legal process. Extradited defendants typically must appear in court within a day of arriving in the Czech Republic.
Federal prosecutors say a senior Indian government spy ordered Mr. Pannun’s assassination in May and recruited Mr. Gupta to plan the assassination. U.S. authorities thwarted the plan last June before it could be carried out. Mr. Pannun is general counsel for the New York-based Sikhs for Justice, which seeks to create a Sikh state called Khalistan independent of India.
In a petition to India’s Supreme Court, Gupta’s lawyer, Rohini Mutha, said her client had been wrongly accused and that “there is nothing on record linking him to a larger conspiracy to assassinate the alleged victim.”
Mutha alleged that Gupta received adverse legal advice from Czech government-appointed lawyers “under undue influence from US government agencies” during the early stages of his detention. And the U.S. was “blaming each other on foreign policy.”
Prosecutors said that hours after the June 18, 2023, assassination of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada, an unnamed Indian government official sent Gupta “a video clip showing Nijjar’s bloody body slumped in a car.” A few hours later, the Indian government official sent Gupta an address for Pannun, according to the indictment. The same person had sent messages to Gupta. Gupta two days later He said assassinating Pannung was “now our top priority.”
In September, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there were “credible allegations” that Indian government agents were behind Nijjar’s murder.
Aaron Shaffer contributed to this report.
