[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 145 (Thursday, September 27, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1999]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


         OPERATION SILENCE: SHIFTING BLAME ON AIR INDIA BOMBING

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. EDOLPHUS TOWNS

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 27, 2007

  Mr. TOWNS. Madam Speaker, on August 4, the Indian newspaper and 
website Tehelka, which has done significant work exposing corruption in 
India, published a report on the 1985 Air India bombing, which was the 
worst terrorist incident involving aircraft until September 11, 2001. 
In the report, they produce new evidence that the Indian Government was 
responsible for the attack, which killed 329 innocent people.
  The new report discusses the interrogation of the late Babbar Khalsa 
leader Talwinder Singh Parmar, who was considered by the Indians to be 
one of the masterminds of the attack. It should be noted that Babbar 
Khalsa was and is heavily infiltrated by the Indian Government and has 
been pretty much under its control
  In his interrogation, Parmar points the finger of responsibility 
straight at the Indian Government. The documents, obtained from the 
Punjab Human Rights Organization, PHRO, which conducted a 7-year 
investigation, were supposed to have been destroyed by the 
interrogating officer, but he secretly kept them all this time.
  Parmar identifies Lakhbir Singh Rode as a mastermind of the bombing. 
Rode is head of the International Sikh Youth Federation. According to 
PHRO, Rode is an agent of the Indian Government. Sarabjit Singh, chief 
investigator for the PHRO, reports that Parmar was ordered killed to 
cover up Rode's involvement.
  Parmar was supposed to have been killed in an encounter with police, 
but the PHRO pointed out that he had been in police custody for some 
time at the time he was killed. PHRO reports that there is ``conclusive 
evidence'' that Parmar was killed in police custody.
  With this information coming on top of the mountain of evidence 
produced by Zuhair Kashmeri and Brian McAndrew in their book Soft 
Target and the report by former Member of Parliament David Kilgour in 
his book Betrayed: The Spy Canada Abandoned, in which he reports that a 
Canadian-Polish double agent was approached by representatives of the 
Indian Government asking him to become involved in a second bombing 
because ``the first one worked so well,'' there can be no doubt that 
the Indian Government itself is the real culprit behind this act of 
terrorism. The links are just too strong.
  State terrorism is unacceptable whether it is carried out by the 
Taliban in Afghanistan, by Mr. Ahmadinejad in Iran, by some tinhorn 
dictator in Latin America, or by the ``world's largest democracy.'' We 
cannot let this stand. The time has come to stop our aid to India, end 
our trade, and speak out strongly for self-determination, the 
cornerstone of democracy, throughout South Asia. Only then will these 
kinds of abuses, designed to set up one ethnic or religious group as 
``terrorists'' so they can be killed, come to an end.
  I request the permission of the House to place the Tehelka article in 
the Record for the information of my colleagues and the public.

                  Kanishka Tragedy--Operation Silence

                         (By Vikram Jit Singh)

       Fifteen years after Babbar Khalsa International leader 
     Talwinder Singh Parmar, one of the two alleged masterminds of 
     the mid-air bombing of Air India's Kanishka airplane, was 
     shown as having being killed in an encounter in Punjab, 
     retired Punjab Police DSP Harmail Singh Chandi, who nabbed 
     Parmar from Jammu in September 1992 and interrogated him for 
     five days before he was killed along with five others, has 
     come forward with the claim that Parmar was killed in police 
     custody on the orders of senior police officers, who also 
     asked his confession record to be destroyed. In his 
     confession, Parmar had named Lakhbir Singh Brar ``Rode'', 
     nephew of the late Bhindranwale and head of the banned 
     International Sikh Youth Federation, as the mastermind of the 
     bombing. Rode, who is now said to be holed up in Lahore, has 
     never figured in the investigations of either the CBI or the 
     Canadian authorities.
       Chandi has brought forward the entire record of Parmar's 
     confession, including audio tapes and statements, before the 
     Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the John Major 
     Commission of Inquiry that is reinvestigating the June 23, 
     1985 blast that claimed 331 lives off the Irish coast. Chandi 
     had been ordered by senior officers to destroy the records 
     but he retained them secretly. The record was brought before 
     the Major Commission due to seven-year-long investigations by 
     the Punjab Human Rights Organisation (PHRO), a Chandigarh-
     based ngo that conducted interviews of Parmar's associates in 
     India and Canada and pieced together a comprehensive report. 
     The PHRO's Principal Investigator Sarbjit Singh and lawyer 
     Rajvinder Singh Bains flew to Canada along with Harmail in 
     June and produced their findings before the Commission's 
     counsels.
       A Canadian citizen, Parmar was shown as having been killed 
     in an exchange of fire between police and six militants in 
     the wee hours of October 15, 1992, near village Kang Arian in 
     Phillar sub-division. However, evidence brought forward by 
     Harmail (who was then DSP, Phillaur) shows that Parmar was 
     interrogated between October 9 and 14 by senior police 
     officers, where he revealed that the blasts were instigated 
     by Lakhbir Singh Brar Rode.
       Parmar's confession reads: ``Around May 1985, a functionary 
     of the International Sikh Youth Federation came to me and 
     introduced himself as Lakhbir Singh and asked me for help in 
     conducting some violent activities to express the resentment 
     of the Sikhs. I told him to come after a few days so that I 
     could arrange for dynamite and battery etc. He told me that 
     he would first like to see a trial of the blast . . . After 
     about four days, Lakhbir Singh and another youth, Inderjit 
     Singh Reyat, both came to me. We went into the jungle (of 
     British Columbia). There we joined a dynamite stick with a 
     battery and triggered off a blast. Lakhbir and Inderjit, even 
     at that time, had in their minds a plan to blast an 
     aeroplane. I was not too keen on this plan but agreed to 
     arrange for the dynamite sticks. Inderjit wanted to use for 
     this purpose a transistor fitted with a battery . . . That 
     very day, they took dynamite sticks from me and left.
       ``Then Lakhbir Singh, Inderjit Singh and their accomplice, 
     Manjit Singh, made a plan to plant bombs in an Air India (AI) 
     plane leaving from Toronto via London for Delhi and another 
     flight that was to leave Tokyo for Bangkok. Lakhbir Singh got 
     the seat booking done from Vancouver to Tokyo and then 
     onwards to Bangkok, while Manjit Singh got it done from 
     Vancouver to Toronto and then from Toronto to Delhi. Inderjit 
     prepared the bags for the flights, which were loaded with 
     dynamite bombs fitted with a battery and transistor. They 
     decided that the suitcases will be booked but they themselves 
     will not travel by the same flights although they will take 
     the boarding passes. After preparing these bombs, the plan 
     was ready for execution by June 21 or 22, 1985. However, the 
     bomb to be kept in the flight from Tokyo to Delhi via Bangkok 
     exploded at the Narita airport on the conveyor belt. The 
     second suitcase that was loaded on the Toronto-Delhi ai 
     flight exploded in the air.''
       Sarabjit said the PHRO's probe has shown that Parmar was 
     killed to hide the name of Lakhbir, who was an Indian agent. 
     ``After the Khalistan movement gained in sympathy in the 
     West, especially in Canada, after the 1984 Blue Star 
     operation and the killing of Sikhs in Delhi, a plot was 
     hatched to discredit the Sikh movement. Parmar was roped in 
     by Lakhbir at the behest of his masters. The Punjab Police 
     got orders to finish off Parmar as he knew too much about the 
     main perpetrators. On the day of the Kanishka blast, an 
     explosion took place at Japan's Narita airport, where two 
     Japanese baggage handlers were killed. The plot was to 
     trigger blasts when the two aircraft had de-embarked their 
     passengers but the 1 hour 40 minute delay in Kanishka's 
     takeoff led to the bomb exploding mid-air,'' Sarbjit said.
       What gives credence to Sarabjit's charge is the Source 
     Report (in Tehelka's possession) prepared by the Jalandhar 
     Police soon after Parmar was killed. Based on information 
     provided by Parmar--though not attributing it to his 
     interrogation--the report makes no reference to Lakhbir. 
     Interestingly, Lakhbir, accused in many acts of terrorist 
     violence, is wanted by the Indian Government in only a minor 
     case registered in Moga, Punjab. The Red Corner Interpol 
     notice, A-23/1-1997, put out by the CBI against Lakhbir 
     states: ``OFFENCES: House breaking, theft, damage by fire.''
       The PHRO told Canadian authorities that conclusive evidence 
     existed of Parmar being killed in police custody and not in 
     the ``encounter'' shown in FIR No 105 registered at Phillaur 
     police station on October 15, 1992. The PHRO report, AI 
     Flight 182 Case, states ``On October 14, 1992, a high-level 
     decision was conveyed to the police that Parmar had to be 
     killed . . . The contradiction in the FIR and post-mortem 
     report (PMR) is too obvious. As per the FIR, Parmar was 
     killed by AK-47 fire by SSP Satish K Sharma from a rooftop. 
     The PMR shows the line of fire of the three bullets is 
     different. It cannot be if one person is firing from a fixed 
     position. The PMR is very sketchy and no chemical analysis 
     was done. Moreover, the time of death is between 12am and 2am 
     according to the PMR, whereas the FIR records the time of 
     death at 5.30am.'' Then Jalandhar SSP and now IGP, Satish K 
     Sharma, denied the charge. ``It was a clean encounter. The 
     RCMP is bringing this up because they botched their 
     investigations and failed to get convictions,'' he said.

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