An Indian ex-official charged by the United States with directing a murder-for-hire plot has dismissed the allegations, his family said, expressing shock that Vikash Yadav was wanted by the FBI.
Yadav, 39, described the claims as false media reports when he spoke to his cousin, Avinash Yadav, the relative said on Saturday in their ancestral village about 100km from the capital New Delhi.
The US Department of Justice charged Yadav with leading an unsuccessful plot to murder Sikh separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun last year.
Yadav was an official of India’s Research and Analysis Wing spy service, according to the indictment unsealed on Thursday.
India, which has said it was investigating the allegations, said Yadav was no longer a government employee, without saying whether he had been an intelligence officer.
“The family has no information about him working for the spy agency,” Yadav’s cousin said in the village of Pranpura in Haryana state.
“He never mentioned anything about it,” despite the two speaking to each other regularly.
“For us he is still working for the CRPF,” the federal Central Reserve Police Force, which he joined in 2009, said Avinash Yadav, 28.
The cousin said he did not know where Yadav was but that he lived with his wife and a daughter who was born last year.
Indian officials have not commented on Yadav’s whereabouts.
The Washington Post, citing US officials, reported on Thursday that Yadav was still in India and that the United States was expected to seek his extradition.
His mother, Sudesh Yadav, 65, said she was still in shock: “What can I say? I do not know whether the US government is telling the truth or not.” — Reuters
