NEW DELHI, SEP 26 -
A U.S. court has ordered Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to answer
allegations that he failed to stop anti-Muslim rioting when he was chief
minister of Gujarat state, overshadowing his first trip to the United
States as his country's leader.The civil case before a New York court
seeks compensatory and punitive damages from Modi for crimes against
humanity and extrajudicial killings under the Alien Tort Claims Act and
the Torture Victim Protection Act. Modi has 21 days to respond. The
petitioner in the case is the American Justice Center, a non-profit
human rights organization, acting on behalf of two survivors of the 2002
riots in the western Indian state."There is evidence to support the
conclusion that minister Modi committed both acts of intentional and
malicious direction to authorities in India to kill and maim innocent
persons of the Muslim faith," the petition said.After years of being
unwelcome in the United States, Modi will arrive for a five-day visit on
Friday where he will speak at the United Nations in New York before
heading to Washington for talks with President Barack Obama.
The first meeting between the two leaders follows Modi's landslide
general election victory in May. Compared with other foreign powers,
Washington was slow to warm to Modi, with its ambassador to India only
meeting him in February when opinion polls put the Hindu nationalist
leader on course to win.
Modi, 64, was denied a U.S. visa in 2005 under the terms of a 1998 U.S.
law that bars entry to foreigners who have committed "particularly
severe violations of religious freedom".
At least 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, died in a wave of reprisal
attacks across Gujarat after a train carrying Hindu pilgrims was set on
fire in February 2002.
Critics accuse Modi, who was chief minister of the state from 2001
until this year, of doing too little to stop revenge attacks on minority
Muslims. He denies the accusations and was exonerated in an Indian
Supreme Court inquiry in 2012.An Indian government spokesman was not
immediately available for comment, and a spokesman for Modi's Bharatiya
Janata Party declined to comment.
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