A White House spokesperson said on Wednesday that Indian officials expressed "surprise and concern" when they were informed about their alleged involvement in a plot to kill Khalistani terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.
India stated that activity of "this nature was not their policy", Reuters reported quoting White House spokesperson Adrienne Watson.
"We understand the Indian government is further investigating this issue and will have more to say about it in the coming days. We have conveyed our expectation that anyone deemed responsible should be held accountable,” Watson said.
The US is treating the plot with utmost seriousness and has raised the issue with the Indian government at the senior-most levels, the White House spokesperson further added.
This came after India said it had received "some inputs" from the US during a recent discussion on security matters about a "nexus" between organised criminals, terrorists and others. However, the statement did not mention where the nexus operated.
The remarks from the Ministry of External Affairs came on a day British daily Financial Times said that the US had thwarted an attempt to kill Sikh extremist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on American soil. It also reported that the US government had "issued a warning" to India over concerns that New Delhi was "involved in the plot" to eliminate Pannun.
"During the course of recent discussions on India-US security cooperation, the US side shared some inputs pertaining to nexus between organised criminals, gun runners, terrorists and others. The inputs are a cause of concern for both countries, and they decided to take the necessary follow-up action," Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Arindam Bagchi said in response to queries on the British media report, as per PTI.
"On its part, India takes such inputs seriously since it impinges on our own national security interests as well," Bagchi said.
The spokesman said issues in the context of US inputs are already being examined by relevant departments.
This comes two months after Canada said there were "credible" allegations linking Indian agents to the June murder of a Sikh separatist leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in a Vancouver suburb, something India has rejected.
Pannun, like Nijjar, is a proponent of a decades-long but now fringe demand to carve out an independent Sikh homeland from India called Khalistan, a plan New Delhi sees as a security threat due to a violent insurgency in the 1970s and 1980s.
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