The United States has charged a former Indian intelligence officer who allegedly directed a foiled plot to murder a Sikh separatist in New York City last year — charges that, for the first time, implicate the Indian government directly in the brazen cross-border attempt, according to U.S. officials.

The department on Thursday unsealed an indictment of Vikash Yadav, a now-former officer in India’s Research and Analysis Wing spy service, represents an escalation of the U.S. effort to hold accountable a major geopolitical ally for an alleged act of attempted violence on American soil. U.S. officials had refrained from charging Yadav in the 16 months since the assassination plot was foiled, out of an apparent reluctance to rupture relations with India and in the hope that the Indian government would follow through on a commitment to carry out a serious inquiry.

The decision to do so now follows months of frustration among some administration officials with the course of India’s own investigation into the attempted killing. Some officials had privately voiced concerns that India’s probe would amount to a whitewash.

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The charges come as Washington and New Delhi have sought to deepen strategic ties, with the aim of countering China’s efforts to dominate the Indo-Pacific region. They also come on the heels of a surprise announcement Monday by Canada that it was expelling six Indian diplomats for involvement in the June 2023 killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh activist in British Columbia, as part of a broad campaign of violence against Indian dissidents directed by a senior official in the Indian government.

Yadav, 39, is still in India and the United States is expected to seek his extradition, officials said.

“The United States has continued to aggressively investigate the attempted assassination of a U.S. citizen in New York by an Indian intelligence official, and to push India to conduct its own credible and transparent investigation,” said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), speaking in general terms about the U.S. investigation. “It is absolutely critical that every nation, whether they’re a partner like India or an adversary like Iran, understand that targeting anyone on American soil for extrajudicial killings is unacceptable, and the United States will catch them and hold them accountable.''

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U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that senior officials in the administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi likely authorized the plot, The Washington Post previously reported.

The charges against Yadav, who will be named by the Justice Department publicly for the first time, were added to an existing indictment against an Indian citizen who allegedly served as a middleman enlisted to hire a contract killer, according to the officials. In an indictment unsealed last November, Nikhil Gupta was accused of murder-for-hire and conspiracy. He was extradited to the United States in June from the Czech Republic, where he had been detained on a U.S. arrest warrant, and is in a Brooklyn jail awaiting trial. He has pleaded not guilty.

The new charges mark “a big step, and it’s a step that I think shows a continued push for accountability,” said one U.S. official.

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Yadav and Gupta are alleged to have sought the killing in June 2023 of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a U.S. and Canadian citizen who serves as general counsel for the New York-based Sikhs for Justice, a group that seeks to carve from India an independent Sikh state called Khalistan.

The indictment contained the explosive allegation that the murder plot was directed by an Indian official, but it did not charge Yadav, as some law enforcement officials had urged. It referred to him only as a co-conspirator, “CC-1,” who directed the plot from India, and made no mention of the Indian spy agency.

The Post identified Yadav as “CC-1” in a story earlier this year.

Officials at the time said they wanted to see India carry out its own investigation and hold those responsible to account. President Joe Biden, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and CIA Director William J. Burns have stressed with their counterparts the need to undertake a thorough and credible probe, officials said.

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Last November, as the Justice Department prepared to unseal Gupta’s indictment, New Delhi announced it had established a high-level inquiry committee to “look into all the relevant aspects of the matter.” In the ensuing months, Biden administration officials have said Indian officials have assured them that they were taking the investigation seriously. But some officials within the U.S. government have been frustrated at the lack of meaningful steps taken by New Delhi.

Members of the Indian inquiry committee have been in Washington this week for talks with the Justice Department and FBI. They updated their counterparts on their investigation, and the Americans briefed the Indians on developments in the U.S. probe, in part to help them with their efforts, officials said.

“It was meant to be presentation for them of what we know and why” defendants are being criminally charged, said the official.

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The talks were “cooperative, productive,” the official said. “These were not hostile, adversarial conversations.”

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Tuesday that India’s dispatch of a team to Washington to talk to U.S. law enforcement is “a sign that they’re taking this [investigation] seriously.”

India in fact arrested Yadav several months ago — but on charges that were not directly linked to the assassination effort, several U.S. officials said. He was eventually placed on supervised release, they said. While that step seemed aimed at addressing demands for accountability from the United States, it stopped short of admitting any direct government involvement in the plot.

India has employed a split strategy, greeting the allegations in Canada with defiance and denials as it offers concessions to Washington that seem aimed at assuaging the Biden administration while seeking to keep the crisis from spreading.

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While the United States has confronted New Delhi over a failed murder plot, Canada has outlined an alarmingly extensive campaign of surveillance, intimidation and violence involving Indian diplomats, criminal syndicates and a member of Modi’s inner circle. Canadian officials identified the senior Modi official as Amit Shah, who serves as home affairs minister. Spokespeople in India’s Ministry for External Affairs and its Home Ministry, which oversees national security matters, did not respond to requests for comment about the allegations.

No direct operational link has surfaced at this point between the Canadian cases and the plot to kill Pannun, U.S. and Canadian officials said. However, the killing of Nijjar in Canada and the attempt on Pannun have parallels, and both have drawn concern that they are part of a global effort by India’s security services to harass, coerce and kill dissidents and others perceived as hostile to the Modi government.

On Tuesday, New Delhi denied that Ottawa had presented credible evidence tying the plots back to the Indian government.

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The State Department on Tuesday said Canada’s allegations were serious. “We have wanted to see India take them seriously and cooperate with Canada’s investigation,” spokesman Matthew Miller said. “They have chosen an alternate path.”

The State Department has catalogued India’s alleged engagement in transnational repression, citing in a report this year credible accounts of “extraterritorial killing, kidnapping, forced returns or other violence,” as well as “threats, harassment, arbitrary surveillance and coercion” of overseas dissidents and journalists.

Gerry Shih in New Delhi and Aaron Schaffer in Washington contributed to this report.