PM Modi is on a five-day visit to US
As he arrives for his first trip to the United States in over a decade, a US court has given Prime Minister Narendra Modi 21 days to answer allegations that he failed to stop the communal riots in Gujarat in 2002.
However, White House officials who did not wish to be named said that summons cannot be served to Mr Modi as he is entitled to full immunity as the head of a government.
"This case is a frivolous and malicious attempt to distract attention from the visit of the Prime Minister to the United States General Assembly and a bilateral summit with the president of the United States," said a spokesperson for the Foreign Affairs Ministry.
The petitioner in the case is the American Justice Center, a non-profit human rights organisation, acting on behalf of two survivors of the 2002 riots in Gujarat. Mr Modi was serving his first term as Chief Minister of his home state when the riots erupted. More than 1,000 people were killed, most of them Muslims.
The civil case before a New York court seeks compensatory and punitive damages from Mr Modi for "crimes against humanity" and extrajudicial killings under the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victim Protection Act.
After years of being unwelcome in the United States, Mr Modi arrived for a five-day visit on Friday in New York, where he will speak at the United Nations before heading to Washington for talks with President Barack Obama.
Mr Modi, 64, was denied a US visa in 2005 under the terms of a 1998 US law that bars entry to foreigners who have committed "particularly severe violations of religious freedom".
Critics accuse Mr Modi, who was chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 until this year, of doing too little to stop the riots. He has always denied any wrongdoing and was exonerated in a Supreme Court inquiry in 2012.
An analyst said the US case was unlikely to have much impact.
"The evidence against him is based on conjecture as the courts in India have found. This case won't make much difference," said Satish Misra, a political analyst at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.
Mr Modi is not the first leader to be sued in a US court.
A rights group called Sikhs for Justice had filed a case against Congress president Sonia Gandhi, alleging that she played a role in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. That case was also filed in Federal Court of Southern District of New York. The group also filed a similar case against former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.