Washington: A US judge has given to clean chit to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and threw out a lawsuit that accused him of “attempted genocide” during the Gujarat riots in 2002, after the Obama administration submitted that he was entitled to immunity as a sitting head of government.
In a three-page order, Judge Analisa Torres of the Southern District of New York said “in light of the determination by the Executive Branch that Prime Minister Modi is entitled to immunity as the sitting head of a foreign government, he is immune from the jurisdiction of this court in this suit”.
The American Justice Centre, a human rights group, had filed the civil suit against Modi in September just ahead of his visit to the US last year, accusing him of initiating and condoning the communal riots in Gujarat and holding him responsible for the multiple deaths.
Judge Torres said the court considered arguments made by plaintiffs and “finds them to be without merit” and “unpersuasive.” Directing that the case be closed, she cited a US Supreme Court ruling that says courts cannot deny an immunity that the US government has “seen fit to allow” - something the State Department did not do as readily in the case involving diplomat Devyani Khobragade.
The State Department had submitted to the court that “under common law principles of immunity articulated by the Executive Branch in the exercise of its constitutional authority over foreign affairs and informed by customary international law, Prime Minister Modi, as the sitting head of government of a foreign state, is immune from the jurisdiction of the US District Court in this suit while in office.”
“A court must accept the United States suggestion that a foreign head of state is immune from suit – even for acts committed prior to assuming office – ‘as a conclusive determination by the political arm of the Government that the continued [exercise of jurisdiction] interferes with the proper conduct of our foreign relations’,” Torres said in the order.
The court order comes just ahead of President Obama’s visit to India, whose own judiciary (and executive) is less enthusiastic about entertaining complaints against US entities in cases ranging from the Bhopal gas tragedy to the Pan-Am bombing in which Indian nationals who were killed were shortchanged on compensation. In a similar case, a US court last year dismissed a lawsuit against Congress president Sonia Gandhi accusing her shielding party leaders involved in anti-Sikh riots in 1984.
Indian officials see such complaints as part of a pattern of judicial harassment against Indian politicians — from both the Congress and BJP — by anti-India elements masquerading as civil liberties activists.
