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Indian government employee charged in foiled murder-for-hire plot in New York City
The Justice Department announced criminal charges against an Indian government employee Thursday in connection with a foiled plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader living in New York City.
The suspect, Vikash Yadav, remains at large but faces murder-for-hire charges in federal court.
The criminal case was announced the same week as two members of an Indian inquiry committee investigating the plot were in Washington to meet with U.S. officials about the investigation. Also this week, Canada said it had identified India’s top diplomat in the country as a person of interest in the assassination of a Sikh activist there and expelled him and five other diplomats Monday.
“The Justice Department will be relentless in holding accountable any person — regardless of their position or proximity to power — who seeks to harm and silence American citizens,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement announcing the charges. “Today’s charges demonstrate that the Justice Department will not tolerate attempts to target and endanger Americans and to undermine the rights to which every U.S. citizen is entitled.”
The murder-for-hire plot was first disclosed by federal prosecutors last year when they announced charges against a man, Nikhil Gupta, who was recruited by a then-unidentified Indian government employee to orchestrate the assassination of a Sikh separatist leader in New York.
In court documents unsealed last year, investigators in the Southern District of New York alleged Gupta was recruited to hire a hitman to murder the then unnamed victim, who prosecutors described in court papers as a vocal critic of the Indian government and staunch advocate for a Sikh sovereign state, often referred to as Khalistan.
The hitman, who would have been paid at least $100,000 in cash, was actually an undercover federal agent, and an unnamed co-conspirator Gupta discussed the plot with was a confidential government source, prosecutors revealed.
Gupta was extradited to the United States in June from the Czech Republic after his arrest in Prague last year.
In a statement, the intended victim, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, said the indictment means the U.S. government has “reassured its commitment to fundamental constitutional duty to protect the life, liberty and freedom of expression of the U.S. Citizen at home and abroad.”
He added, “The attempt on my life on American Soil is the blatant case of India’s transnational terrorism which has become a challenge to America’s sovereignty and threat to freedom of speech and democracy, which unequivocally proves that India believes in using bullets while pro Khalistan Sikhs believe in ballots.”
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Moscow — Former Royal Ballet star Sergei Polunin, famous for his tattoos of Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday announced that he plans to leave Russia. The Ukrainian-Russian dancer was one of the most prominent stars who backed Russia’s unilateral 2014 annexation of Crimea and its military assault on Ukraine. He was rewarded with prestigious state posts.
In a rambling, misspelled message on his Instagram account, Polunin wrote: “My time in Russia ran out a long time ago, it seems at this moment that I have fulfilled my mission here.”
The post first appeared Sunday on his little-read Telegram account.
Ian Gavan/Getty
Polunin, 35, did not give a specific reason for leaving but said that “a time comes when the soul feels it is not where it should be.”
He said he was leaving with his family — his wife Yelena and three children — but “where we will go is not clear so far.”
In the summer, the dancer complained of a lack of security and said he was being followed.
Polunin, who was born in Ukraine, backed Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea — a prelude to the ongoing, full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Putin launched in February 2022.
The dancer was granted Russian citizenship in 2019. He was appointed acting head of a dance academy in occupied Crimea’s biggest city, Sevastopol, and director of the city’s opera and ballet theatre, for which a large new building is under construction.
Just last year he was decorated by Putin for his role in popularizing dance. But in August he was replaced as head of the dance academy by former Bolshoi prima Maria Alexandrova, and a week ago, Russia’s arts minister Olga Lyubimova announced his theater director job would go to singer Ildar Abdrazakov.
This came after on December 9 Polunin published a social media post saying he was “very sorry for people” living in the heavily bombarded village near Ukraine’s city of Kherson, where his family originates from, and that “the worst deal would be better than war.”
Ian Gavan/Getty
Aged 13, Polunin won a scholarship to train at the Royal Ballet School in London and became its youngest ever principal dancer.
With his tattoos — including a large depiction of Putin’s face emblazoned prominently on his chest — and his rebellious attitude, he became known as the “bad boy of ballet” and caused a sensation by resigning from the Royal Ballet at the height of his fame in 2012.
Later he made a 2015 hit video to Irish musician Hozier’s song “Take Me to Church” and was the star of a 2016 documentary called “Dancer.”
He moved to perform at Moscow’s Stanislavsky Musical Theatre’s ballet before launching a solo career, starring in dance performances in roles including the mystic Grigory Rasputin.
In 2019 he posed for AFP with a large tattoo of Putin on his chest which he later supplemented with two Putin faces on either shoulder. He also has a large Ukrainian trident on his right hand.
This year he took part in Putin’s campaign for reelection as a celebrity backer.
Washington — The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to consider South Carolina health department’s effort to cut off funding from Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions, wading into another dispute over access to the procedure in the wake of its reversal of Roe v. Wade.
The case, known as Kerr v. Edwards, stems from the state’s decision in 2018 to end Planned Parenthood South Atlantic’s participation in its Medicaid program. Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, directed the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services to deem abortion clinics unqualified to provide family planning services and end their Medicaid agreements.
Planned Parenthood operates two facilities in the state, one in Charleston and the other in Columbia, and provides hundreds of Medicaid patients with services like physicals, cancer and other health screenings, pregnancy testing and contraception. Federal law prohibits Medicaid from paying for abortions except in cases of rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother.
Planned Parenthood and one of its patients, Julie Edwards, sued the state, arguing that cutting off its funding violated a provision of the Medicaid Act that gives beneficiaries the right to choose their provider.
A federal district court blocked South Carolina from ending Planned Parenthood’s participation in its Medicaid program, and a U.S. appeals court upheld that decision, finding that Edwards could sue the state to enforce the Medicaid Act’s free-choice-of-provider requirement.
The legal battle has already been before the Supreme Court in the past, with the high court last year ordering additional proceedings after deciding in a separate case that nursing home residents could sue their state-owned health care facility over alleged violations of civil rights.
After reconsidering its earlier decision, the three-judge appeals court panel ruled unanimously in March that Edwards’ lawsuit against the state could go forward and said South Carolina couldn’t strip Planned Parenthood of state Medicaid funds.
“This case is, and always has been, about whether Congress conferred an individually enforceable right for Medicaid beneficiaries to freely choose their healthcare provider. Preserving access to Planned Parenthood and other providers means preserving an affordable choice and quality care for an untold number of mothers and infants in South Carolina,” Judge Harvie Wilkinson wrote for the 4th Circuit panel.
South Carolina officials asked the Supreme Court to review that decision, marking the third time the case has been before the justices. The justices agreed to take up the question of whether “the Medicaid Act’s any-qualified provider provision unambiguously confers a private right upon a Medicaid beneficiary to choose a specific provider.”
South Carolina is among the more than two dozen that have passed laws restricting access to abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision reversing Roe v. Wade. In South Carolina, abortion is outlawed after six weeks of pregnancy with some exceptions.
Several states have also enacted laws blocking Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funding, including Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi and Texas.
