Vikas Yadav is currently the most recently added personality on the most wanted board of the FBI in the Gurpatwant Singh Pannu's assassination plot, a US citizen but a Khalistani separatist and an India-designated terrorist, is identified as a "CC-1" in the original indictment related to a murder-for-hire plot by the Department of Justice in 2023.
What do we know about Vikas Yadav?
He was born on 11 December 1984 in Pranpura village in Rewari district in Haryana. He lost his father in 2007. He later married in 2015.
Before being the alleged RAW agent in the alleged assassination plot under the alias 'Amanat'(which roughly translates to trust), he was arrested for extortion and kidnapping of a Rohini based Businessman in 2023 by the Delhi police on behalf of Lawrence Bishnoi. He served a 4-month jail period in Tihar Jail before being granted bail.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said that the person mentioned in the US indictment was no longer employed by the Indian government.
That's all that we know about the most wanted person by the FBI.
US' Charges Against Vikas Yadav
Vikas Yadav faces three charges: conspiracy to hire a hitman, the actual "murder-for-hire" plot, and money laundering. The charges against him and his alleged co-conspirator Nikhil Gupta, were unsealed in the Federal Southern District of New York Court on Thursday.
According to the indictment, Yadav was the alleged mastermind who recruited Gupta to carry out the plot in exchange for helping him get criminal cases against him dismissed. Nikhil Gupta was arrested in the Czech Republic and was extradited to the US in June.
Many of the details in the document repeat the same narratives made in earlier documents filed against Gupta, but this time, Yadav is identified by name.
"Yadav recruited Gupta to orchestrate the assassination of the Victim in the United States and that under Yadav's directions, Gupta contacted a government "confidential source" who he thought was "a criminal associate," it said.
As per the document, the alleged plot began around May 6 last year with Yadav sending Gupta a message on an encrypted app, "This is Vikas ... save my name as Aman".In June 2023, they hired a "hitman" and agreed on a payment of $100,000 to allegedly kill the "victim", the court document which did not name Pannun said. Yadav and Gupta arranged through an "associate of Yadav" to give $15,000 as advance.The plot, however, unravelled as the "hitman" they hired was an undercover US law enforcement officer, according to the 18-page court document, which also included a photograph of Yadav dressed in military fatigues.The charges were filed a day after an Indian Enquiry Committee set up to investigate the allegations visited Washington to discuss the case with US officials.
In November last year, US federal prosecutors charged Nikhil Gupta of working with an Indian government employee in the foiled plot to kill Pannun in New York.
All of the above information is gathered from web searches and compiled.