US-based rights’ group to use Hague to serve papers on Capt
A New York-based Sikh rights group Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) plans to use Hague Convention to serve papers related to a defamation case filed in an Ontario court on Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh.
The SFJ had filed the case against Amarinder last year, in which it claimed damages of $1 million and a permanent injunction against publication of any such statement that linked it to Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI.
The complaint said: “The defamatory statements have caused reputational damage to the SFJ’s status as an NGO and, among other things, have hindered its ability to address ongoing issue of significance to Sikh Canadians.”
The Ontario Superior Court in Toronto has issued an order to SFJ’s lawyers stating that the period for serving the statement of claim against Amarinder has been extended till October 18 this year.
SFJ legal adviser Gurpatwant Pannun said their lawyers would use a United Nations convention to serve the necessary papers on Amarinder.
“We have to send it to the central authority created by India under the Hague Convention and our lawyers will forward the summons and complaint to them in Delhi. And The Hague service is complied with when central authority receives the papers.”
The Hague Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extra Judicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters came into being in 1965, though India only signed on to it in 2007.
The “central authority” identified in India is the department of legal affairs in the law ministry.
If this central agency accepts the papers, it will then be responsible for serving them on Amarinder. A clause in the convention states that India has the option to “refuse to comply therewith only if it deems that compliance would infringe its sovereignty or security”.
However, Pannun argued, “The defamation lawsuit is not against India, it’s against an individual, Capt Amarinder. So India can’t refuse to comply with the request.”
The process is considered complete once the papers have been served and a certificate to that effect issued to the party which contacted it.
SFJ has targeted Amarinder in the past preventing him from undertaking a scheduled visit to Canada last spring when it filed a private prosecution based on an affidavit of a person allegedly tortured during his previous tenure as Punjab chief minister.