As Prime Minister Narendra Modi heads to the US for the Quad summit, what does one make of the summons by a New York district court, demanding that NSA Ajit Doval and former RAW Chief Samant Goel appear before it?
The summons relates to the alleged Indian assassination attempt on Khalistani sympathiser and activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.
A former top Indian diplomat who has served in the US, says that this is only a summons, not an arrest warrant.
A court summons involving other country nationals has to be routed through the US State Department, which in turn will send to the Indian Embassy and the MEA headquarters in Delhi.
“All this takes time and in any case the persons named in this summons enjoy diplomatic immunity while they are in the US,” he said.
“Recall that in 2013, former prime minister Manmohan Singh was named in a summons by the Federal Court of Washington DC, on the basis of a motion filed by the Sikhs for Justice. Nothing happened because Manmohan Singh had diplomatic immunity.”
Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri has dismissed the court summons as “Unwarranted and unsubstantiated imputations. I would only invite your attention to the person behind this particular case whose antecedents are well known.”
He was referring to Pannun, a known Khalistani activist who incidentally, heads the Sikhs for Justice, which is banned in India for subversive activities.
Two others are also named in the summons, Vikram Yadav, former RAW officer who is in India, and Nikhil Gupta, an Indian national held in a New York jail for allegedly trying to hire hitmen to kill Pannun.
The former diplomat believes that Pannun is playing an insidious game, trying to provoke India and stoke sympathy in the US ahead of an important summit.
It is very likely that India would have kept a wary eye on Pannun’s activities, aware of his nuisance value to various anti-India groups in the US. In which case, the summons may have even been anticipated. The fact that Modi is going ahead with his visit suggests all’s well.
