The curious case of Nikhil Gupta just got curiouser as a habeas corpus petition filed on his behalf was adjourned in the Supreme Court, which asked the current inmate of a Czech Republic prison to approach a court there as it was not going to adjudicate the matter in India.
The twists and turns in a bizarre (alleged) plot to kill the Khalistani proponent Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, with dual citizenship of the US and Canada, have exacerbated the issue so much as to threaten the very fabric of increasingly warm India-US ties.
The details of his arrest in the Czech Republic by US agents before he was handed over to the country’s justice system, which may have hurt his religious sentiments when it comes to a vegetarian diet as narrated in the petition, also read like a creepy tale out of a spy thriller.
Even so, it is up to him to go to a Czech court for redress rather than the Indian Supreme Court, which might be the last resort for any Indian citizen with a grievance and yet is so weighed down with pending cases as to find itself being challenged by the tortoise syndrome.
Consider this. The Supreme Court has 80,000 and high courts around 61 lakhs out of a whopping five crore cases pending before the courts in the country, according to the law minister’s statement in the Lok Sabha.
Were the top court to sit every day from January 1, 2024, for a decade without a day’s break, it would have to pass judgments on 23 cases a day even as various cases, including the likes of Nikhil Gupta’s plaint, may get admitted for consideration.
It is in the fairness of things that the case of Nikhil Gupta be settled in a New York court, which is where it will be heading soon, because a lot hinges on this sinister business of extraterritorial killings being cleared up. It is no defence that leading democracies of the West are also thought to be guilty of such assassinations, or ‘hits’ as said in lesser language of the criminal world.
For the sake of a better understanding between India and North American countries, the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada and a plot to inflict a similar fate upon Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in New York be cleared up with India clearing its name of any involvement.
