NEW YORK (NEWSnet/AP) — U.S. authorities announced murder-for-hire charges Wednesday against a man from India who they say plotted to pay an assassin $100,000 to kill a prominent Sikh separatist leader living in New York City.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams announced the charges against Nikhil Gupta, 52, an Indian national who had lived in India, as an indictment was unsealed in Manhattan federal court.

“As alleged, the defendant conspired from India to assassinate, right here in New York City, a U.S. citizen of Indian origin who has publicly advocated for the establishment of a sovereign state for Sikhs, an ethnoreligious minority group in India,” he said in a release.

According to the release, Czech authorities arrested and detained Gupta on June 30 through a bilateral extradition treaty between the U.S. and the Czech Republic. It was not immediately clear when he might be brought to the United States.

India had set up a high-level inquiry after U.S. authorities raised concerns with New Delhi that its government may have known about a plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader on American soil.

U.S. officials became aware of the plot to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who is considered a terrorist by the Indian government.

An administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration said in the release that the DEA stopped the plot when a foreign government employee recruited an international narcotics trafficker to commit murder in the U.S.

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