U.S. indictment alleges multiple Indian assassination plots across North America
CBC
A newly unsealed U.S. criminal indictment has unleashed an unprecedented flood of details about an alleged plot connected to the Indian government to carry out multiple assassinations in North America.
Perhaps the most surprising allegation in the murder-for-hire indictment filed in New York state against Indian national Nikhil Gupta is a claim that there were plans to carry out three such killings on Canadian soil.
The indictment, made public Wednesday, accuses Gupta of attempting this year to arrange one killing in New York after receiving instructions from an Indian government employee.
While the charges involve an alleged scheme in New York City, U.S. prosecutors allege it's connected to a case that roiled Canada-India relations.
In a related development Wednesday, the Indian government announced it will conduct a high-level inquiry into the U.S. allegations.
The indictment says an unnamed Indian government employee offered $100,000 for a contract hit on a Sikh separatist in New York and asked Gupta, 52, to arrange it.
The Indian government employee is not named in the indictment, but he is described as having held different roles, including intelligence, security management and in India's Central Reserve Police Force.
He allegedly provided Gupta with the target's home address, phone numbers, and details of his daily routine. The Indian government employee and Gupta allegedly spoke repeatedly and also met in New Delhi.
As part of the deal, he allegedly offered Gupta a personal favour. The indictment describes Gupta as a drug and weapons trafficker and says the purported Indian government employee promised he could make criminal charges against him disappear.
He allegedly told Gupta he'd spoken with an undisclosed official about his ongoing criminal case and promised: "Nobody will ever bother you again."
Gupta subsequently contacted someone he believed was a hitman without knowing he was an undercover officer with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, says the indictment.
"Finish him brother, finish him, don't take too much time," Gupta allegedly told one person involved in the plot — a DEA informant who introduced him to the undercover officer.
The indictment says Gupta told the would-be killer around June to carry out the assassination as quickly as possible — but not at a sensitive political moment.
The indictment alleges Gupta said he did not want the killing to happen around the time of a high-level U.S.-India political meeting. That period coincides with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit in June to Washington.
More Alberta seniors are now eligible for a provincially funded RSV vaccine.
More than 100 workers at a steel plant in eastern Ontario are being laid off either temporarily or permanently, as a company with facilities in Quebec and Ontario cuts its workforce due to challenging market conditions — including U.S. tariffs.
A small town northwest of Thunder Bay, Ont., has become the unlikely home for hundreds of foreign workers, but many may have to leave the community they've embraced after the end of a federal program put in place to fill gaps in Canada's labour market.
There's mixed reaction in Waterloo to an injuction allowing police to detain, arrest and charge anyone who is participating in unsanctioned street parties in that city this weekend.
Diabetes Canada is excited about Prince Edward Island's new pharmacare deal with the federal government, but hopes the province will reevaluate copays on diabetes supplies, says a senior manager with the organization.
After 26 years of accommodating guests from across the world, Faith Embleton says she and her husband Ken are ready to sell their bed and breakfast.
A group of big-name companies including Google, Meta and Dow have signed a pledge to support tripling the world's nuclear energy capacity by 2050, a signal of the technology's growing resurgence in popularity.
Five years on, Toronto-area doctors and public health officials are looking back at what they've learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and most agree the early experience will prove useful if the city faces another infectious disease crisis.
City staff would like Londoners to take a good look around their home and ask themselves a direct and possibly difficult question: Could everyone in your family survive at home, without leaving and with no other help, for a full 72 hours?
Liberal Leader Mark Carney will officially become Canada's next prime minister within a few hours, taking the reins as the country barrels toward a general election and continues to fend off verbal and economic attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Recent cyberattacks in Newfoundland and Labrador should have been a wake up call for the federal government about the reality of an increasingly hostile world, says one cybersecurity expert.
A recent CBC News analysis found that Nova Scotia is rapidly losing some of its most affordable apartments, but housing experts say there are ways to prevent that.
Premier Susan Holt is defending her decision to not use electricity exports to Maine as leverage against U.S. tariffs, arguing the move might cause long-term pain for New Brunswickers.