[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 33 (Thursday, March 17, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E492-E493]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 TWO SIKHS ACQUITTED IN AIR INDIA CASE

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. EDOLPHUS TOWNS

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 17, 2005

  Mr. TOWNS. Mr. Speaker, I was pleased to learn that this past 
Wednesday, two Sikhs named Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik, 
who were accused of carrying out the 1985 Air India bombing, were 
acquitted. These Sikhs were found innocent because the witnesses 
against them were not believable.
  The Indian government has maintained for 20 years that the Sikhs were 
responsible for the Air India disaster and has used it as an excuse to 
kill Sikhs and tighten the repression against them. Now it is clear 
that they were not responsible.
  Why did India grant a loan of $2 million to the main financial backer 
of the organization that carried out the bombing? Why did Indian 
operatives approach Lal Singh, offering him ``2 million dollars and 
settlement in a nice country'' if he would offer false testimony 
against the two accused Sikhs? Why did the Consul General of India in 
Toronto call in a detailed description of the disaster just hours later 
when it took the Canadian investigators weeks to find that information? 
How did he know so much? Why was the Consul General later expelled?
  His successor as Consul General was quoted as saying that Sikhs who 
support Khalistan, the independent Sikh homeland, are terrorists, but 
the movement for Sikh independence is led by the Council of Khalistan, 
which is committed to achieving an independent Khalistan by peaceful, 
democratic, nonviolent means.
  The book Soft Target, which is the definitive account of the Air 
India case, quotes a Canadian Security Investigative Service 
investigator as saying, ``If you really want to clear the incidents 
quickly, take vans down to the Indian High Commission and the 
consulates in Toronto and Vancouver, load up everybody and take them 
down for questioning. We know it and they know it that they are 
involved.'' And the acquittal of the Sikhs accused just provides 
further substantiation of India's guilt.
  Mr. Speaker, this country must not support terrorism. We cannot 
support the people who bombed the Air India airliner and killed 329 
innocent people, especially at a time when we are fighting terrorism 
around the world. It is time to cut off all our aid and trade with 
India and support freedom and self-determination for all the nations 
struggling for their independence in South Asia. That is the best way 
to establish peace, freedom, security, and dignity for all in that 
troubled region of the world.
  I would like to insert the press release on the acquittal of these 
two Sikhs from the Council of Khalistan into the Record, Mr. Speaker. I 
believe it will clearly show who is responsible for this terrible act 
of terrorism.

        Malik, BagrI Acquitted of All Charges in Air India Case


       justice has been done despite pressure from indian regime

       Washington, DC, March 16, 2005. Ripudaman Singh Malik and 
     Ajaib Singh Bagri have been acquitted of all charges in the 
     Air India bombing case, in a major rebuke to the Indian 
     regime. Malik and Bagri were found not guilty today in the 
     deaths of 329 people who perished when Air India Flight 182 
     was brought down by a bomb on June 23, 1985 in Canada's worst 
     case of mass murder. Justice Ian Josephson delivered the 
     verdicts this afternoon, saying he didn't believe many of the 
     witnesses.
       ``Justice has been done for these Sikhs,'' said Dr. Gurmit 
     Singh Aulakh, President of the Council of Khalistan, which 
     leads the Sikh struggle for independence. ``Despite the 
     effort of the Indian government to blame these Sikhs for its 
     own acts, they have been found innocent. This is a major 
     setback for the Hindustani regime,'' he said. Canadian Member 
     of Parliament wrote in 1989 that the Canadian government had 
     spent $60 million on the case. ``On behalf of over 600,000 
     Sikhs in Canada and the 25 million Sikhs worldwide, we would 
     like to express our gratitude to Judge Josephson for doing 
     the right thing and not caving in to the pressure of the 
     Indian government,'' Dr. Aulakh said.
       Air India flight 182 was blown up off Ireland in 1985. It 
     was on its way from Toronto to Bombay. It was supposed to be 
     blown up at the London airport when no passengers would be 
     aboard, but due to delays it blew up over Ireland. The book 
     Soft Target by Canadian journalists Zuhair Kashmeri of the 
     Toronto Globe and Mail and Brian McAndrew of the Toronto Star 
     exposed India's responsibility for this bombing. In the book, 
     Kashmeri and McAndrew quoted a Canadian Security 
     Investigative Service (CSIS) investigator as saying, ``If you 
     really want to clear the incidents quickly, take vans down to 
     the Indian High Commission and the consulates in Toronto and 
     Vancouver, load up everybody and take them down for 
     questioning. We know it and they know it that they are 
     involved.''
       The book shows that within hours after the flight was blown 
     up, the Indian Consul General in Toronto, Surinder Malik (no 
     relation to Ripudaman Singh Malik), called in a detailed 
     description of the bombing and the names of those he said 
     were involved, information that the Canadian government 
     didn't discover until weeks later. Mr. Malik said to look on 
     the passenger manifest for the name ``L. Singh.'' This would 
     turn out to be Lal Singh, who told the press that he was 
     offered ``two million dollars and settlement in a nice 
     country'' by the Indian regime to give false testimony in the 
     case.
       In his book Betrayal: The Spy Canada Abandoned, Member of 
     Parliament David Kilgour wrote that Canadian-Polish double 
     agent Ryszard Paszkowski was approached to join a plot to 
     carry out a second bombing. The people who approached 
     Paszkowski were connected to the Indian government.
       The main backer of the group that was supposedly behind the 
     Air India bombing had received a $2 million loan from the 
     State Bank of India just before the plane was attacked, 
     according to Soft Target. The year after the bombing, three 
     Indian consuls general were asked to leave the country. At 
     the time of the bombing, the Congress Party needed the Sikhs 
     as scapegoats to win votes on a law-and-order platform. The 
     attack also served as justification for the government to 
     shed more Sikh blood.
       The Indian government has murdered over 250,000 Sikhs since 
     1984, more than 300,000 Christians since 1948, over 90,000 
     Muslims in Kashmir since 1988, and tens of thousands of 
     Tamils, Assamese,
       Manipuris, Dalits, Bodos, and others. The Indian Supreme 
     Court called the Indian government's murders of Sikhs ``worse 
     than a genocide.'' According to a report by the Movement 
     Against State Repression (MASR), 52,268 Sikhs and tens of 
     thousands of other minorities are being held as political 
     prisoners in India without charge or trial. Some have been in 
     illegal custody since 1984! We demand the immediate release 
     of all these political prisoners.
       The Sikh Nation declared its independence from India on 
     October 7, 1987 and formed the Council of Khalistan at that 
     time to lead the struggle for independence. When India became 
     independent, Sikhs were equal partners in the transfer of 
     power and were to receive their own state, but the weak and 
     ignorant Sikh leaders of the time were tricked into staying 
     with India on the promise that they would have ``the glow of 
     freedom'' and no law affecting the Sikhs would pass without 
     their consent. Sikhs ruled an independent and sovereign 
     Punjab from 1710 to 1716 and again from 1765 to 1849 and were 
     recognized by most of the countries of the world at that 
     time. Sikhs do not accept the Indian constitution. No Sikh 
     representative has ever signed it.

[[Page E493]]

       V.P. Singh, who was the Indian Consul General in Toronto 
     when Soft Target came out, was quoted in the June 22, 1989 
     issue of the Washington Times, as saying that Sikhs who 
     support Khalistan are terrorists. The Council of Khalistan, 
     which leads the Sikh struggle to liberate Khalistan, openly 
     repudiated militancy and has an 18-year record of working to 
     free Khalistan by peaceful, democratic, nonviolent means.
       Indian police arrested human-rights activist Jaswant Singh 
     Khalra after he exposed their policy of mass cremation of 
     Sikhs, in which over 50,000 Sikhs have been arrested, 
     tortured, and murdered, then their bodies were declared 
     unidentified and secretly cremated. Khalra was murdered in 
     police custody. His body was not given to his family. No one 
     has been brought to justice for the kidnapping and murder of 
     Jaswant Singh Khalra. The police never released the body of 
     former Jathedar of the Akal Takht Gurdev Singh Kaunke after 
     SSP Swaran Singh Ghotna murdered him. He has never been tried 
     for the Jathedar Kaunke murder. In 1994, the U.S. State 
     Department reported that the Indian government had paid over 
     41,000 cash bounties for killing Sikhs.
       Missionary Graham Staines was murdered along with his two 
     sons, ages 8 and 10, by a mob of militant, fundamentalist 
     Hindu nationalists who set fire to the jeep, surrounded it, 
     and chanted ``Victory to Hannuman,'' a Hindu god. None of the 
     people involved has been tried. The persons who have murdered 
     priests, raped nuns, and burned Christian churches have not 
     been charged or tried. The murderers of 2,000 to 5,000 
     Muslims in Gujarat have never been brought to trial. An 
     Indian newspaper reported that the police were ordered not to 
     get involved in that massacre, a frightening parallel to the 
     Delhi massacre of Sikhs in 1984.
       India is not one country; it is a polyglot thrown together 
     for the convenience of the British colonialists. It is doomed 
     to break up as they did. Last year, the Punjab Legislative 
     Assembly passed a bill cancelling the government's daylight 
     robbery of Punjab river water. The Assembly explicitly stated 
     the sovereignty of Punjab.
       ``The Indian regime stands exposed for the bloody tyranny 
     that it is,'' said Dr. Aulakh. ``This verdict is a major 
     setback to their repressive drive for hegemony over all of 
     South Asia,'' he said. ``This is a victory not only for the 
     Sikh Nation, but for freedom-loving people everywhere.''
       ``I urge the international community to help us free 
     Khalistan from Indian occupation,'' Dr. Aulakh said. 
     ``Freedom is the birthright of all people and nations,'' he 
     said. ``As Professor Darshan Singh, a former Jathedar of the 
     Akal Takht, said, `lf a Sikh is not for Khalistan, he is not 
     a Sikh','' Dr. Aulakh noted. ``We must continue to press for 
     freedom,'' he said. ``Without political power, religions 
     cannot flourish and nations perish. A sovereign Khalistan is 
     essential for the survival of the Sikh religion and the Sikh 
     Nation.''

                          ____________________