'Satisfied With Cooperation': US Govt On India's Probe Into Alleged Plot To Assassinate Pannun | Watch

The US government officials had a “productive meeting” with visiting officials of the India Enquiry Committee, the State Department said on Wednesday, adding they were satisfied with the cooperation from the Indian side.

“We are satisfied with the cooperation. It continues to be an ongoing process. We continue to work with them on that, but we do appreciate the cooperation and we appreciate them updating us on their investigation as we update them on ours,” State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters at his daily news conference.

US citizen and Sikh separatist

Miller was responding to a question on the visit of officials from the India Enquiry Committee, which is investigating the American allegations of involvement of an Indian official in the assassination plot of a Sikh separatist, who is also an American citizen.

‘India Enquiry Committee’

“The meeting that occurred yesterday – we updated – we being the US government broadly – updated members of the Committee of Inquiry about the investigation that the United States has been conducting. We’ve received an update from them on the investigation that they have been conducting. It was a productive meeting and I will leave it at that,” Miller said.

“They did inform us that the individual, who was named in the Justice Department indictment is no longer an employee of the Indian government,” he said in response to a question on the India Enquiry Committee.

The panel was established to probe the activities of certain organised criminals and is actively investigating the individual who was identified last year in the Department of Justice’s indictment as an Indian government employee who directed a foiled plot to assassinate a US citizen in New York City.

In November last year, US federal prosecutors charged Indian national Nikhil Gupta with working with an Indian government employee in the foiled plot to kill Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in New York. Gupta, arrested in the Czech Republic in June last year, was extradited to the US on June 14. India has denied the allegations but has constituted an internal investigations team to look into it.

(With agency inputs)