'Modi knew': SFJ leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun files lawsuit against Government of India; MEA calls it 'unwarranted'

New Delhi: Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with President Joe Biden, a court in the United States has summoned the Government of India and some of its top security officials following a lawsuit filed by Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a leader of the separatist organisation, Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), in connection with the allegation of an attempt to assassinate him.

New Delhi on Thursday dismissed the lawsuit as “completely unwarranted and unsubstantiated imputations” and underlined the SFJ leader’s extremist antecedents.

Pannun, a Canadian American citizen, filed the civil action lawsuit at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on September 17, demanding damages for the conspiracy allegedly hatched by some officials of the Government of India to assassinate him.

The lawsuit by the SFJ leader was filed just days before the proposed bilateral meeting between the prime minister and the US president on the sideline of the fourth in-person summit of the Quad at Wilmington, Delaware on September 21.

He filed the lawsuit against the Government of India, the prime minister’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, former chief of the Research and Analytical Wing Samant Goel, Vikram Yadav, who was identified as an agent of the intelligence agency, and Nikhil Gupta, a businessman now incarcerated in the US for allegedly trying to hire a hitman to kill him in New York.

“As we’ve said earlier, these are completely unwarranted and unsubstantiated imputations. Now that this particular case has been lodged, it doesn't change our views about the underlying situation. I would only invite your attention to the person behind this particular case whose antecedents are well known,” Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said in New Delhi on Thursday when a journalist asked for the reaction of the Government of India.

Misri was briefing journalists in New Delhi about the prime minister’s visit to Delaware and New York from September 21 to 23. “I would also underline the fact that the organisation (SFJ) that this person (Pannun) represents is an unlawful organisation. It has been declared as such under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act of 1967 and it has been done so on account of its involvement in anti-national and subversive activities aimed at disrupting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India,” said the foreign secretary.

Gupta had been arrested in the Czech Republic on June 30 following an extradition request by the US. A few weeks later, the US had formally requested the Czech Republic to extradite him. The Municipal Court in Prague had then ruled in favour of his extradition. Czech Justice Minister Pavel Blažek had on June 6 this year approved his extradition after he had exhausted all legal options. He had been extradited to the US on June 15.

The US prosecutors on November 29, 2023, alleged that Gupta had been an associate of an official of an agency of the Government of India and the official had engaged him to hire a hitman to assassinate Pannun, the general counsel of the SFJ.

The allegation by Washington DC against New Delhi had followed a similar claim by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government in Ottawa about the role of India in the June 18, 2023, killing of another Khalistani Sikh extremist Hardeep Singh Nijjar at the parking lot of a gurdwara at Surrey in the British Columbia province of Canada. Though New Delhi had dismissed the allegation, the Biden Administration had been nudging the Government of India to cooperate in the probe launched by the agencies of the Government of Canada in connection with the murder. It had also been revealed that the US had provided intelligence inputs to help Canada accuse India of the killing of Nijjar.

The 28-page civil action lawsuit filed by Pannun in the US court referred to the killing of Nijjar in Canada. It claimed that "these efforts" had been overseen by Vikram Yadav, named in the lawsuit and described as a senior officer of the R&W, approved by the then chief of the agency and the national security advisor.

"The US captured and indicted Gupta. But the Government of India denies responsibility,” the lawsuit said, adding that Pannun brings this action to hold the Government of India, Doval, Goel, Yadav, and Gupta, "accountable for their unprecedented attempt to assassinate a US citizen on US soil.”

Pannun was designated as a terrorist by the Government of India in 2020. The SFJ was first banned under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act on July 10, 2019, for running a global campaign for the secession of Khalistan from India. The Government of India on July 9 this year extended the ban on the SFJ for another five years, in view of its role in running the campaign against India in Canada, Australia, Italy, France, the United Kingdom, and the US.