‘I Acted Alone’: Nikhil Gupta Takes Full Blame In Plot To Kill Sikh Terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun

Washington: With his fate about to be decided in an American courtroom, Nikhil Gupta has chosen to tell a federal judge that he acted alone. In a personal note sent to Judge Victor Marrero before sentencing on November 20, he takes full responsibility for his role in the alleged plot to assassinate Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) Chief and Sikh terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, saying nobody else was acting with him. 

The letter appeared to be less a legal defence and more a confession of collapse. Nikhil Gupta stated that the man arrested in early 2023 was someone even he no longer recognised, and claimed that heavy drinking and personal troubles clouded his judgement. He insisted that he was ready to live with whatever sentence the court imposes, even as prosecutors have sought 20 minutes for Pannun himself to address the court directly at the sentencing.

When Drinking Took Over His Judgement

At the centre of the letter is one bleak admission, where he said, “I had lost my mind... wish I could turn back time to 2023 and undo my mistakes.”

Gupta linked that period to heavy drinking and private troubles that, in his words, clouded his ability to think clearly. He stated that the first days behind bars brought severe thoughts of self-harm, driven largely by guilt over the anguish he believed that he inflicted on his wife, children, mother, bigger family and even his two cats.

Nikhil Gupta, who is behind bars, asserted that survival for him became a daily struggle. He writes of solitary confinement in the Czech Republic, followed by a transfer to Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, where isolation and fear of attacks from other prisoners weighed heavily on him.

He disclosed that to endure the loneliness, he turned to meditation, yoga and spiritual reading. He confessed, however, that the hardest part was not the confinement itself. “The most serious challenge in front of me at that time was to contact my family and to let them know that I was alive and to make them aware of the situation, but I could not do so for several weeks due to many restrictions on me as an American law offender...,” he wrote, noting that for weeks, he could not even confirm to his loved ones that he was alive.

Notably, Nikhil Gupta's sentencing arrives against a charged legal backdrop. The prosecutors have recently asked for Sikh terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the man named as the target of the alleged plot, to be allowed 20 minutes to speak directly to the court.

Meanwhile, Nikhil Gupta closes his letter without bargaining, saying he will accept whatever judgement the court hands down.