US court quashes case against Sonia

A US court here has dismissed a lawsuit against Congress president Sonia Gandhi in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case filed by a Sikh group, ruling that she cannot be held “personally liable” but did not bar the group from bringing fresh litigation against her. 

In a 13-page order, US District Judge Brian Cogan granted Gandhi’s motion to dismiss the complaint filed by the Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) for “lack of subject matter jurisdiction and failure to state a claim.”

He, however, denied the request by Gandhi that the court should impose an “anti-suit injunction” prohibiting SFJ from bringing further lawsuits.

Cogan said the court cannot consider Gandhi to be personally liable based upon the allegations of extrajudicial killings or torture when she only became the Congress president in 1998, more than a decade after the 1984 riots.

He said the anti-Sikh riots occurred almost 30 years before SFJ and the plaintiffs filed the lawsuit, and “the statute of limitations poses an obvious hurdle for plaintiffs.”