Louis Century and the legal case against the Indian Prime Minister
Nexus Magazine, the University of Toronto Faculty of Law’s alumni magazine, featured a story about Louis Century and one of his interesting cases in an article entitled Prosecuting Modi: Alumnus Louis Century and the legal case against the Indian Prime Minister.
The story is about Louis’ recent attempt, with Marlys Edwardh, to have Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrested for supporting torture when he was the leader of an Indian state named Gujarat. In 2002, more than 1,300 people, mostly Muslims, were murdered in communal violence and over 100,000 people were displaced. Modi’s role in those events is a mater of dispute.
When Modi was visited Canada in April 2015, Marlys and Louis initiated a private prosecution and convinced a justice of the peace that there was sufficient evidence to require Modi to appear before a Canadian court to face a criminal charge of torture under section 269.1 of the Criminal Code.
However, before it could be determined whether Modi would be summonsed or arrested, the Crown dropped the charges.
Nexus notes that, during Modi’s 3-day visit to Canada, Prime Minister “Stephen Harper warmly welcomed ‘a man whose India dream has given hope to millions'” and signed an agreement to sell India more than 7,000 pounds of Saskatchewan uranium for nuclear power.
Read more about this interesting case, and Louis’ legal background, here.
Update: This was one of the top ten University of Toronto news stories in 2015.