The summons issued by a court in the United States to the Indian government on Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun’s case, alleging a plot to murder him, are “completely unwarranted and unsubstantiated”, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Thursday.
Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri made the comment at a press briefing in response to a question about the summons issued by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Misri said that the summons do not change India’s views on the matter and reiterated Delhi’s position that Pannun belongs to an unlawful organisation. “As we 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,” the foreign secretary said.
Referring to Pannun, Misri added: “I would only invite your attention to the person behind this particular case whose antecedents are well known and underline the fact that the organisation this person represents is an unlawful organisation and has been declared as such [under the Indian law].”
The summons by the court in New York name the Indian government, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, businessman Nikhil Gupta and Samant Goel, the former chief of India’s foreign intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing, among others, NDTV reported. They have been asked to respond within 21 days.
In November, the United States Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, announced that it had filed “murder-for-hire charges” against Gupta, an Indian citizen, in connection with his alleged participation in a thwarted plot to assassinate a Sikh separatist leader.
While the statement did not name the separatist leader, a report in the Financial Times identified him as Pannun.
Pannun is an advocate for Khalistan, an independent nation for Sikhs that some members of the community seek to carve out of India. He is the general counsel of Sikhs for Justice, which was banned in India in 2019. The following year, Pannun was declared an “individual terrorist” in India under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.
The United States’ Department of Justice has alleged that the plot was part of a larger conspiracy to kill one person in California and at least three in Canada. It claimed that Gupta was working on the directions of an Indian government officer.
In June, Gupta was extradited to the United States from the Czech Republic, where he was arrested in June 2023 at the request of American authorities when he travelled from India to Prague.
India constituted a high-level inquiry committee in November to examine inputs from the United States about the alleged foiled plot to assassinate Pannun on American soil.
The external affairs ministry had said at the time that Delhi will take action based on the findings of the inquiry committee.
On Thursday, in response to a reporter’s question about the status of the inquiry, Misri said: “When these issues were first brought to our attention, we have taken certain action and these issues and the allegations are being inquired into by a high-level committee and the relevant agencies on both sides have engaged on this.”
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