NEW DELHI: The US department of justice’s indictment against Indian national Nikhil Gupta reads less like a sophisticated espionage drama and more like what investigators describe as a clumsy and ill-conceived operation. If the FBI’s claims are accurate, the alleged conspiracy appeared to disregard even the most basic principles of intelligence tradecraft.
Serving and retired members of India’s security establishment, reacting to details in the US filings, said the episode seemed to violate virtually every operational norm followed by professional agencies worldwide. According to one retired government official, the recklessness suggested an overzealous operative in undue haste, unconcerned with protocol or discipline. “Forget a senior officer—any mid-level official familiar with standard procedures would have shut this down immediately, given the number of red flags,” he said.
From the outset, the alleged plan appeared to breach a cardinal rule of covert operations: never allow a direct link between a state agency and street-level actors. The US department of justice documents indicate conversations and actions that, experts say, created precisely such a trail.
Handlers, former officials note, typically avoid direct contact with criminal intermediaries, especially through traceable electronic means. Yet court filings suggest that Vikash Yadav and Gupta exchanged routine messages on encrypted platforms that were already under scrutiny. “Handlers do not communicate directly with low-level assets using compromised channels,” said one officer, adding that professional operations rely on multiple buffers.
These buffers—often described as “cut-outs” or “dead drops”—are designed so that individuals involved do not know each other and cannot trace the chain upward. The objective is simple: if one link is exposed, the rest of the structure remains insulated. In this case, however, the filings allege direct exchanges that effectively erased such layers of deniability.
One of the most striking allegations in the indictment is that Yadav allegedly shared his own contact details and even a selfie in official military uniform, complete with visible insignia. Security experts described this as an extraordinary lapse. “In a real covert operation, a handler is meant to be invisible,” a former official said. “Here, the alleged conduct made identification almost effortless.”
The operation’s vulnerabilities reportedly deepened when Gupta sought assistance from what he believed was a criminal associate. According to US prosecutors, that individual was in fact a confidential source working with the US Drug Enforcement Administration. The source then introduced Gupta to a purported hitman who turned out to be an undercover DEA officer. What might have been intended as a covert recruitment thus became, investigators claim, a controlled sting operation.
Experts point out that intelligence agencies typically spend months, sometimes years, vetting intermediaries and verifying operational security. In contrast, the indictment suggests a rapid series of moves that exposed the plot at every stage. “There was no patience, no due diligence—just a rush into what turned out to be an ambush,” another official observed.
The financial trail, according to the DOJ, was equally problematic. On June 9, 2023, conspirators allegedly arranged for an associate to hand over $15,000 in cash to an undercover agent inside a car in Manhattan. Former officials described this as a glaring operational blunder. Transporting physical cash in a heavily surveilled city to someone not previously vetted, they argue, transformed what prosecutors call a geopolitical conspiracy into a conventional criminal transaction, easily captured through federal monitoring systems.
In professional covert operations, funding for illicit activities is typically routed through complex laundering mechanisms or layered financial transfers to obscure its origin. Physical exchanges, particularly in high-surveillance environments, are avoided unless absolutely necessary and carefully shielded. The alleged Manhattan handover, experts say, did the opposite.
Perhaps the most consequential allegation relates to events following the killing of Khalistani separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada. According to US filings, Yadav allegedly sent Gupta a video of Nijjar’s bloodied body and indicated that a New York-based target had become a “priority.” Security officials argue that such explicit communication, if proven, severely undermines plausible deniability.
“In sensitive situations, operatives are expected to go dark when global attention intensifies,” one official noted. “Instead, the alleged messaging openly referenced both incidents, effectively linking them and strengthening the prosecution’s narrative of coordinated action.”
By the time Gupta was arrested in the Czech Republic, US authorities had assembled what they describe as a substantial evidentiary record built through undercover operations and electronic surveillance. According to the indictment, the unraveling was not the result of an extraordinary intelligence breakthrough but rather a sequence of self-inflicted errors.
Security professionals reviewing the case emphasize that the US allegations remain subject to judicial scrutiny. However, they argue that if the claims hold up in court, the episode would stand as a textbook example of how not to conduct covert operations. In their assessment, it was not a masterclass in espionage but an illustration of how haste, overconfidence and disregard for tradecraft can collapse an operation before it truly begins.
