Agent Vikash: Wanted by the FBI, but a patriot of his village | India News

Vikash Yadav's house in Pranpura is harder to reach than to find. Only after a few rounds of inspection by the locals does the large iron gate, which hides most of the one-story house with a pink fence, come off – in the last row of settlements, behind which is the typical bush-covered Aravali terrain. But it doesn't work without accompaniment.
“Sensitive matter,” says a card-playing group that is our first “checkpoint.”
“Please no cameras and no recordings on the cell phone,” our local guide tells us afterwards, who agrees to show us the way.
Vikash is seen sporadically and is rarely heard from. He is as inconspicuous as he can be in Pranpura, just one of hundreds of his youth who took jobs and left and returned just to visit their family. That changed sensationally last week.
On October 17, Vikash shot to the forefront of an unraveling international diplomatic row after the US Justice Department announced that he had been charged with murder-for-hire in the attempted murder of New York-based separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. According to the American indictment, Vikash also knew about Hardeep's murder Singh Nijaranother separatist, last year in Canada, leading to a cooling in relations between New Delhi and Ottawa after Justin Trudeau's government allegedly implicated Indian government agencies.
Although the US indictment alleges that Vikash was an Indian government official employed in the Cabinet Secretariat, which oversees research and agriculture, New Delhi has denied this and said Vikash had been dismissed from service. In a recent statement, Union External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said, “Vikash Yadav is no longer an employee of the Government of India.”
Pranpura and Vikash's family believe neither one nor the other.
The surveillance became necessary because journalists emerged and investigated Vikash since the US indictment revealed his name as a co-conspirator (CC1). Pranpura, part of a cluster of villages in Haryana's Rewari district near the industrial town of Bawal, is 105 km south of Delhi but is not on any of the state or national highways that traverse the region. In this place of familiar faces and routines, the American revelation raised eyebrows for two reasons – because Vikash was now wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and because the indictment suggested he was working as an Indian spy.
“How do you know what the Americans say is true?” Sudesh shot back. Vikash's mother, aged around 60, spoke from behind the gate after our companion Rajeev called her. Sudesh and everyone else you talk to in the village insist that Vikash has always been and remains a government employee.
“My son is working for the country and our government will take care of him,” said Sudesh, who knows little about Vikash’s job except that he is a “commander of the CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force).”
So the rest of Pranpura – which prides itself as a 'fauji gaon' (army village) and whose most prominent landmark is a martyrs' memorial next to the panchayat office – also knows Vikash. Like many of them, Rajeev, a neighbor of Sudesh, dismissed the revelation of the Pannun conspiracy and called Vikash “a patriot serving the country.”
Vikash, now 39, was born in a “fauji” household in the mid-80s. His father Ram Singh Yadav was in the BSF and died of a heart attack in 2007 while posted in Tripura. The family moved around the North East with Yadav senior's postings, so Vikash and Ajay completed their schooling in various places including Shillong. But both of them graduated from Ahir College, Rewari.
Ajay is now posted as police chief in Gurgaon. His wife and two children live with Sudesh. Vikash's family – wife and one-year-old daughter – lives in Delhi.
“Our family has always served the country,” Sudesh said. “I don't think Vikash has committed any crime.” Vikash, Sudesh added, does not visit the house regularly and “calls every now and then.” “I don’t know where he and his family are right now. He has not contacted us,” she said, declining to comment on media reports that Vikash had spoken to his family after his name came out as CC-1 and denying the charges.
Sudesh said she also had no idea about his arrest by Delhi Police last year. The arrest on December 18 by the Special Cell of Delhi Police on charges of extortion and kidnapping of a businessman from Rohini followed the first chargesheet in the Law Ministry's Pannun conspiracy probe last November. Vikash spent three months in custody. A Delhi court granted him six days' interim bail on March 22 to see his daughter, who was undergoing treatment for an acute respiratory infection.
The court order described Vikash as a “former government employee with a clean record.” On April 22, Vikash was released on bail without objection from the prosecution.
A principal order of the Central Administrative Court dated November 29, 2023 reveals that Vikash was appointed as Senior Field Officer (SFO) of Aviation Research Center (ARC) in the executive cadre of the Directorate General of Security (Cabinet Secretariat) on October 9, 2023, after the completion of the probation. ARC is part of R&AW. Vikash knocked on CAT's door looking for a permanent position after working as a probation officer at the agency since November 2015.
In May, soon after his release from prison, Vikash visited Pranpura, the last time Sudesh claims to have seen him. “He came here alone and stayed for a few days. He didn’t tell me he was arrested,” Sudesh said.
Vikash, said neighbor Rajeev, rarely left his home during visits, so interactions with him have been rare since he started working. “He was a good academic and a fitness freak,” Rajeev said.
A local resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said no one in India would view Vikash as a criminal even if the US charges were true. “Pannun is a wanted accused in India and America does not want to hand him over to us. They also did not hand over David Headley (accused of 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks), who is a terrorist. Assuming Vikash is an Indian officer, why should India extradite him for doing his job,” he said. Another villager named Vikash said that since the US indictment, the police have visited the sarpanch and conducted some inquiries. “No security forces were posted here as they felt it was not necessary in our village. It’s safe here,” said a neighbor of Sudesh.
“We will wait and watch. “What else can we do?” said a neighbor. “Sarkar dekh legi.”
“How do you know what the Americans say is true,” asks Vikash’s mother Sudesh, speaking from behind the gate of her home in Pranpura in Rewari. She, along with others in the village, insists that he is a patriot and a government employee and calls US allegations of contract killing “false”.