The very-much-alive British writer is referred to as "the late V.S Naipaul, a Nobel prize winning author" in the footnote of sworn testimony from an FBI agent.
The error is included in documents filed at a court in Chicago for the trial of two men accused of plotting to attack staff of the Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
VS Naipaul is mentioned in connection with his wife Lady Naipaul, a journalist and the sister of a Pakistani general who was allegedly killed by Islamic militants last year.
The slip-up in the footnotes of evidence submitted by Special Agent Lorenzo Benedict was spotted by the entertainment and crime news website The Smoking Gun after the documents were unsealed on Tuesday.
Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a Pakistani-born Canadian, and David Headley, a US citizen who changed his name from Daood Gilani, are accused of conspiring with Pakistani terrorist groups to take revenge on the Jyllands-Posten newspaper for "making fun of Islam".
It is alleged that the two men, who are both in their late 40s and live in Chicago, planned a reconnaissance mission to Copenhagen during which Headley filmed the newspaper's officers as well as the central train station and a synagogue.
VS Naipaul, 77, is widely considered to be one of the finest living novelists writing in English. His works include A House for Mr Biswas, A Bend in the River and The Enigma of Arrival, and he received the Nobel Literature Prize in 2001.
