Sikhs for Justice, a protest group that gained notoriety for lawsuits against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi, vowed to organise a major protest involving thousands, at the venue of the community reception for Mr. Modi in San Jose, California, on September 27.
In a press release, the organisation, which describes itself as a human rights group and regularly draws attention to allegations that Mr. Modi had a role in the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat, said, “Thousands of Sikhs from bay area will converge on SAP Centre to support ‘Referendum 2020’ campaign and oppose Modi’s nationalist agenda, which is planning to convert India into Hindu nation by 2020.”
SFJ also hinted that it was seeking to build bridges with the 125 U.S. academics, who on August 27 released an open letter to the heads of tech companies in Silicon Valley, many of whom Mr. Modi is scheduled to meet later this month, where they warned of the risks to transparency and civil liberties stemming from the “Digital India” initiative and reminded readers of the reasons why Mr. Modi was banned from visiting the U.S. for nine years.
“SFJ is seeking support from the academia who have signed the statement accusing Modi’s government of authoritarian practices, to join the Sikh Freedom Rally and help expose the denial of right to self-determination to the Sikh community, who have been facing systematic discrimination based on their religious belief,” the group said.
Meanwhile SFJ also called for a “panel rehearing and rehearing en banc” by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, after a judge denied its appeal for a lawsuit that the group filed against Mrs. Gandhi for links that she or her party allegedly had to the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom.
On August 25 the same court upheld a June 2015 decision by the U.S. Court of the Eastern District of New York that found SFJ’s arguments in its lawsuit to be “without merit.”
Slamming the repeated appeal actions of SFJ Ravi Batra, lawyer for Mrs. Gandhi said, “SFJ's filing of its Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc today is a legally misguided attempt to keep its meritless case against the obviously innocent Sonia Gandhi alive. Why SFJ works so hard to be factually and legally wrong is hubris married to ignorance.”
