US Secret Service nixed Pannun plan to serve NSA Ajit Doval summons

NEW DELHI: A US court has observed that the service of delivery of summons to NSA Ajit Doval, who accompanied PM Narendra Modi during his visit to the US on February 12-13, was not completed during his stay there, brushing aside Khalistan separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun’s claim that he managed to get the notice delivered to the top Indian security official.
The court was responding to a letter from Pannun’s lawyer which also revealed that

US Secret Service

agents guarding the Blair House, where the Indian delegation was put up, threatened to arrest his server when he tried to place the notice on the ground outside what is the president’s guest house. The server could only leave the summons with a nearby Starbucks store that didn’t prove to be enough for the court.
After reviewing the letter, a judge of the Southern District of New York said that “the complaint was not delivered to a member of the hotel management or staff or any officers or agents providing security for Defendant (Doval), as required by the Court's Order”. The development confirms the Indian position that the NSA wasn’t served the summons, which foreign secretary Vikram Misri had described as based on unwarranted and unsubstantiated imputations, during his stay in the US.
The summons was issued last year in September by a US court in response to a civil lawsuit filed by Pannun about an alleged murder plot against him for which American authorities had blamed an Indian government agent named

Vikash Yadav

. The Indian government has conducted a probe into the issue and recommended legal action against Yadav. Indian national Nikhil Gupta remains in US custody for his alleged involvement in the plot and his case will go to trial on November 3, 2025.

Pannun is said to have hired 2 process servers and one investigator to effect service on Doval in Washington D.C. during the latter’s 2-day trip to the US. According to the contents of the letter, the first server, identified as Ambiko Wallace, reached Blair House on February 12 at 7.22 pm and found it barricaded with a single checkpoint that was guarded by Secret Service agents. Wallace showed the legal document to an agent, but he would have none of it and forced the server to immediately leave the checkpoint.
Another individual named Wayne Engram, apparently a more enterprising process server with 15 years of experience, approached the agents next day at 12.15 pm. As the Secret Service again refused to accept any document, he tried to place the envelope on the ground before them – a “standard method of service” apparently. However, one of the agents told him that he would be arrested if he left the summons on the ground. It was then that Engram decided to leave the documents at the nearest public location where he would not be arrested. This happened to be a Starbucks approximately 100 feet from the checkpoint. “Mr. Engram left the service documents in a sealed envelope in the public seating area outside the Starbucks. Then he went back to the checkpoint, told the agents where he had left the documents, and asked them to please retrieve them and give them to Defendant as soon as possible,’’ says the letter. This clearly proved to be insufficient for the court. While all this was going on, the investigator hired by Pannun also spoke to Blair House staff and Secret Service over phone but was told there was no way to serve the Defendant there. They also refused to share any email that could be used for sharing the summons.
The

Pannun murder plot

threatened to snowball into a major diplomatic row last year, with the Biden administration not just seeking accountability but also backing similar charges by Canada over the murder of another Khalistan leader named Hardeep Siungh Nijjar. Having recommended legal action against Yadav and pledging “functional improvements” in the system to deal with a matter like this, India will hope that the case will no longer act as an irritant in bilateral ties. Pannun, who was designated as a terrorist by India in 2020, is the spokesperson for Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), a Khalistan group India wants the US to ban.