Reportedly, Nikhil Gupta, who was assigned the task of hiring a hitman to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh, a well-known Sikh activist living in New York, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and money laundering in an American court. Gurpatwant Singh is a leading figure of the Khalistan movement in the USA and has been declared a terrorist by the Indian government since 2020. According to American prosecutors, the plot was directed by an Indian intelligence officer, Vikash Yadav, who recruited Gupta to hire a hitman. Yadav remains at large.US authorities had thwarted the conspiracy to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh on American soil in September 2023 and issued a warning to India over concerns it was involved in the plot. US President Joe Biden raised the issue with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the G20 in New Delhi.Nevertheless, the United States charged former Indian intelligence officer Vikash Yadav for allegedly directing a foiled plot to assassinate an American citizen. The US Attorney’s Office registered a murder-for-hire and money-laundering case against him. His indictment directly implicated India in the attempted assassination of Gurpatwant Singh.It is pertinent to mention that before this abortive attempt, another Sikh leader of the Khalistan movement, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, was killed in Vancouver (Canada) on 18 June the same year. The then Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused India of involvement in his murder, which caused a severe diplomatic row between the two countries.The guilty plea by Nikhil Gupta is surely a judicial confirmation of a murder-for-hire assassination plot on American soil by India. It was not an isolated incident but part of a wider campaign to eliminate Indian dissidents living in other countries.The Guardian and The Washington Post, in 2024 and 2025 reports, corroborated the adoption of this strategy by India by revealing that India had also carried out similar assassinations in Pakistan. The reports mentioned the killing of twenty individuals in Pakistan since 2020 as part of a wider strategy to eliminate hostile elements living in foreign lands. According to these publications, the Indian intelligence agency (RAW) began carrying out assassinations abroad as part of an emboldened national security approach after 2019. RAW is directly controlled by the office of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.It is an irrefutable reality that, as far as Pakistan is concerned, successive Indian governments have maintained a hostile posture, as evident from the three wars fought over the Kashmir dispute. India persistently makes efforts to harm and weaken Pakistan and has also carried out a sustained campaign to malign and denigrate Pakistan globally through propaganda and the narrative of Pakistan being a hub of terrorism in an ostensible attempt to cover up its own actions. The Brussels-based NGO EU DisinfoLab, in its report titled “Indian Chronicles” on 9 December 2020, revealed a massive 15-year-long web of false anti-Pakistan campaigns by India. The investigation uncovered a network of over 750 fake media outlets across 116 countries and more than 10 sham NGOs accredited to the UN, all designed to malign Pakistan. The report indicated Indian malevolence and the depth of planning behind these designs. India has also spurned overtures by Pakistan to make a new beginning in relations through peaceful resolution of disputes, including Kashmir.Indian RAW, in collaboration with Afghan intelligence agencies, has been supporting acts of terrorism by the TTP against Pakistan besides supporting insurgency in Balochistan, as revealed by Kalbhushan Yadav, the Indian spy caught in Balochistan. Since the advent of Narendra Modi — a disciple of RSS ideology of Hindutva — the animosity has risen to a much higher level.India is now waging a proxy war against Pakistan, intensified by Narendra Modi’s government in the aftermath of the military defeat in May this year. There has been an exponential increase in acts of terrorism in both Balochistan and KPK.Unchallengeable evidence regarding collusion between India and the Taliban regime for orchestrating terrorist attacks in Pakistan is available. The assault on Jaffer Express and twelve cities of Balochistan by BLA using weapons left behind by US forces are strong pointers towards the supporters of these acts. The BLA did not have the capacity to launch such sophisticated attacks without meticulous planning by its handlers. BLA has also targeted Chinese nationals working on CPEC projects in Balochistan.According to media reports, a special desk has been created in RAW to undermine and thwart the implementation of CPEC, and Pakistan’s intelligence agencies have gathered authentic information to this effect. The RAW chief, who reports directly to the Indian Prime Minister, is personally supervising the venture.The TTP is also active in KPK. Security posts and personnel of law-enforcement agencies are being attacked almost every day.The foregoing establishes that India, through a sustained proxy war, is not only trying to sabotage the implementation of CPEC in Pakistan but also using overt and covert means to destabilise and weaken the country. Pakistan has shared a dossier with the UN, US and other countries containing evidence of Indian involvement in sponsoring terrorist acts within Pakistan and supporting Baloch insurgents and other entities on the UN terrorist list. Yet it is a regrettable reality that nobody seems bothered about alleged state terrorism by India and the attempts to foment instability in Pakistan.The apathy of the international community and the UN towards Indian state terrorism portrays a hypocritical dimension of global politics, subservient to strategic and commercial interests rather than humanitarian causes, international law and UN conventions. It explains why issues like Kashmir and Palestine remain unresolved and perpetrators of oppression continue to pursue their objectives. It is indeed an affront to the UN, a body responsible for maintaining peace and ensuring all member states act in conformity with the UN Charter.India, through its proxy war against Pakistan, has created a dangerous situation. Pakistan and India are both nuclear powers, and any military confrontation between them can have disastrous consequences for the region and beyond. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the UN and those who profess adherence to the UN Charter and love for peace to prove it through concrete actions. Expressing concern and then looking away will only aggravate the situation, to the detriment of regional and global peace and security.

Malik Muhammad AshrafThe writer is a freelance columnist. He can be reached at ashpak10@gmail.com

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