NEW DELHI: The US government has held back delivery of 31 MQ-9A Sea Guardian and Sky Guardian drones to India until New Delhi carries out a “meaningful investigation” into the conspiracy to assassinate Sikh leader, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.
Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who hold dual US and Canadian citizenship, is a New York-based activist of Khalistan movement – the struggle for independent homeland for Sikhs by separating Punjab from India.
The Wire reported that the proposed $3 billion purchase includes 15 Sea Guardian drones for the Indian Navy, while the Indian Air Force and Army are supposed to get eight Sky Guardian drones each. The report said that Washington has also held back smaller Indian acquisitions, including a proposal to buy six Boeing P-8I long-range maritime patrol aircraft. These are to supplement 12 P-8I Poseidon aircraft that the Indian Navy already operates.
Ironically, the Indian Ministry of Defence’s internal approval for the now-stalled drone procurement came in June 2023, a week before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to Washington. This was also the time when the conspiracy to kill Pannun – set in motion by an Indian security official named CC1, according to a federal indictment made public last November – shifted to high gear.
Today, “the purchase is stuck in the US Congress because of anger over the brazen attempt to assassinate Pannun. US representatives have frozen the legislative movement needed for proceeding with the sale,” the Wire quoted a highly-placed source in Washington as having said.
Explaining the delay in delivering these lethal, long-range weapons to India, the Washington-based source says that Indian-American lawmakers in particular are deeply concerned about the fallout from the indictment of an Indian named Nikhil Gupta. He has been formally charged with conspiring to kill Pannun, and is currently in detention in the Czech Republic pending his deportation to the US.
The US federal prosecutors maintain that Gupta had promised $100,000 to an FBI agent posing as a hitman to kill Pannun in New York. Gupta was arrested in the Czech Republic on June 30 at America’s request. On November 29, the US federal prosecutors charged Gupta with murder-for-hire, which carries up to 10 years in prison; and conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, which has a maximum sentence of a 10-year jail term.
