Now u. S. Authorities have reportedly thwarted a plot to kill a Sikh separatist on American soil. It comes two months after Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there were credible allegations linking Indian agents to the murder of a Sikh separatist leader in Vancouver in June. India has denied the claims. Well, we can go live now to our Washington correspondent, Gary O'Donoghue. Tell us more about this. It's a bit of a surprise. It's come out of the blue.

It has come out of the blue. And it is, I think, quite worrying, particularly for the American authorities who were involved in the intelligence gathering for the Canadian allegations about the plot on their soil. And I think this is going to be something that's going to be a problem for New Delhi because in some ways they were able to rebuff the Canadian claims over the assassination there. They were pretty robust about that. It's a very different business if you're going up against Washington on this. And the National Security Council here says it takes these claims with the utmost seriousness. Apparently, there is already one sealed indictment against an individual in New York because the subject of this assassination allegation or the plot for it was Gobat Wan Singh Panon, who's an American based lawyer who works for one of the Sikh nationalist groups. So it's something that I think will be an issue between Washington and New Delhi at a time when they're trying to strengthen relations, particularly in the Indo Pacific area.

And I think, Gary, what makes this so important to a note is the fact that this is coming from the National Security Council at the White House. And it follows, of course, concerns from Canada's prime Minister Justin Trudeau. And even though India has said in that case that there's no credible evidence on that and we haven't heard from India on this, I understand it's still quite alarming.

It is alarming. And the Indian government dismissed Canada's claims of a sort of credible view that this was orchestrated from India. The assassination there, they dismissed that as absurd. Now, we haven't heard anything like that kind of language from New Delhi today in relation to these reports. And as you rightly say, regini the National Security Council effectively standing up this story, which was originally reported by the Financial Times, is an indication that they believe that there's a substantial amount of truth in it. So that is going to be a problem. And you'll remember Narendra Modi was here back in the early summer, fated at the White House speech to Congress, a kind of new era of US. India relations. And this sort of thing puts that kind of atmosphere seriously at risk in terms indeed.

Gary O'Donoghue in Washington. Thank you very much.