India has rejected a civil lawsuit filed in the United States by Sikh separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, calling the allegations against its senior officials fabricated and malicious. The Pannun lawsuit names National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and former Research and Analysis Wing chief Samant Goel among its defendants, and it alleges a plot to assassinate Pannun in New York in 2023. New Delhi’s response came on Tuesday, a day after a US federal judge allowed Pannun to pursue service of the summons on the two officials through Indian courts.
External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal delivered the response at the weekly media briefing. He said, “We reject the fabricated and malicious attacks on our high officials. Also, we reject the frivolous lawsuits.” Jaiswal added that a request for serving judicial documents in India can only be routed through India’s designated central authority, the Ministry of Law and Justice. The Pannun lawsuit, he said, would not change that position.
The order behind the dispute came on 9 November from US District Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the Southern District of New York. It allows Pannun to pursue service of summons on Doval and Goel through Indian courts with jurisdiction over the areas where the two officials are believed to reside. Pannun must submit a proposed service packet by 30 November before the clerk can transmit the documents. The ruling concerns the procedure for serving legal papers and does not decide whether the allegations in the case are true.
Pannun lawsuit and the Hague Convention service route
The court accepted Pannun’s argument that Article 19 of the Hague Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents allows foreign judicial documents to be served through India’s domestic judicial system. The order followed several unsuccessful attempts by Pannun’s lawyers to serve Doval personally during his official visits to the United States. The Pannun lawsuit has been moving through the US courts since it was filed in September 2024, and the service question has been one of its longest-running disputes.
The US State Department has also been drawn into the service question. In a filing before the court, it said summonses and a complaint against the Indian government had been delivered to the Indian Embassy in Washington on 9 October under a diplomatic note signed on 30 September. The department said transmitting the note was a procedural step and did not indicate any position on the merits of the civil case or the validity of the service. The Pannun lawsuit seeks damages from the Government of India, Doval, Goel, former RAW officer Vikash Yadav, Nikhil Gupta and 50 unnamed defendants.
Pannun lawsuit allegations and the criminal case
Pannun alleges that the defendants conspired to assassinate him at his home in New York in retaliation for his advocacy of an independent Sikh state called Khalistan. The allegations have not been established in court, and India has rejected any involvement by its officials in the alleged plot. Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri had also rejected Pannun’s allegations in September, describing them as completely unwarranted and unsubstantiated imputations. Pannun is legal counsel for Sikhs for Justice, a group banned in India.
The civil case is separate from a criminal prosecution in the United States against Gupta, an Indian national accused of arranging the killing. Gupta pleaded guilty in February 2026 to three charges, including murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire and conspiracy to commit money laundering, and he is scheduled to be sentenced on 20 November. The Pannun lawsuit does not depend on the outcome of that criminal case, and the two proceedings have run on separate tracks.
What happens next in the Pannun lawsuit
Pannun must submit his proposed service packet by 30 November, and the court will then consider whether the documents can be transmitted through the Indian courts. India has said any request for the service of judicial documents must go through the Ministry of Law and Justice, and it has rejected both the allegations and the lawsuit itself. The judge did not rule that Doval or Goel had plotted an assassination, and she did not decide whether the lawsuit had overcome every possible defence based on jurisdiction or immunity. The Pannun lawsuit now turns on that service question, with the 30 November deadline the next date in the case.