MN Star Tribune: NY federal court summons Indian PM to respond to lawsuit accusing him of human rights abuses
NEW YORK — A U.S. human rights group on Friday offered a $10,000 reward for anyone who can serve on India’s prime minister a summons issued by a federal court in New York to respond to a lawsuit accusing him of serious abuses more than a decade ago.
Immunity rules for visiting foreign leaders mean Narendra Modi can’t be served papers to start a lawsuit, but the attention-grabbing case casts a shadow over his first trip to the U.S. as head of government.
The lawsuit against Modi stems from long-standing allegations that he didn’t do enough to stop devastating religious riots in his home state of Gujarat in 2002, when he served as chief minister there. More than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed in some of the worst religious violence India has seen since its independence from Britain in 1947.
The human rights group, the American Justice Center, filed the suit Thursday in Manhattan federal court on behalf of two unnamed survivors of the violence. The plaintiffs are seeking monetary and punitive damages and a judgment that Modi’s conduct amounted to genocide….