WASHINGTON: Nikhil Gupta now formally stands convicted in a US federal court after a Manhattan judge accepted his guilty plea in a murder-for-hire conspiracy targeting a Sikh separatist leader in New York -- a case that carries a maximum exposure of 40 years in prison.
On February 17, US District Judge Victor Marrero issued an order accepting Gupta’s guilty plea after reviewing the transcript of his allocution before Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn.
Gupta, 54, had stood in court last week and admitted under oath that “in the spring of 2023, I agreed with another person to have another individual murder a person in the United States, ” and that he “had delivered $15, 000 in cash via cellular phone to another individual in the United States”.