Nikhil Gupta

Nikhil Gupta is an Indian national who pleaded guilty in a Manhattan federal court on 13 February 2026 to three counts: murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The counts concern a plot to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the New York-based head of Sikhs for Justice. The court formally accepted the plea the following week, finding that he entered it knowingly and voluntarily.

The case against him rests on a US indictment, so what follows about the plot is what prosecutors allege. They say that in May 2023 a person first called "CC-1" in court papers, later named as Vikash Yadav, hired Gupta to arrange the killing. They say Gupta approached a contact who was in fact working with US law enforcement, that a fee of $100,000 was agreed, and that a $15,000 cash advance was handed to the supposed hitman, an undercover US officer, in Manhattan on about 9 June 2023. The indictment also alleges that on 18 June 2023, hours after Hardeep Singh Nijjar was shot outside a gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia, Yadav sent Gupta a video purportedly showing Nijjar's body, and that on 19 June Gupta told the undercover officer that Nijjar had also been a target.

Key moments

• 30 June 2023: arrested in the Czech Republic at the request of the United States.
• 14 June 2024: extradited to the United States.
• January 2025: in an interview with ThePrint he said he did not know Yadav and was being pressured to plead guilty.
• 13 February 2026: pleaded guilty before Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn. According to the Southern District of New York's release as quoted by The Wire, he worked at the direction of an Indian government employee.
• Sentencing: the maximum terms are 10, 10 and 20 years. Judge Victor Marrero first set sentencing for 29 May 2026. It was later put back to 26 June and then, at the defence's request after Gupta changed lawyers, to 25 September, and then to 20 November 2026 because prosecutors said the intended victim wished to take part and would be out of the country on 25 September (The Tribune, 13 August 2026). No sentence had been imposed as of that report.

What he is known for: Gupta is the first person to plead guilty in the Pannun plot. After his plea, Scroll reported, the Sikh Coalition and the Khalsa Community Patrol said accountability must not stop with him and called for senior Indian officials to be held to account, and Indian-American groups asked the US to investigate officials' role. Scroll noted that the Indian government had not commented on the plea. His public profile comes from this case alone, and nothing here goes beyond the court record and press reports of it.