[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 4] [Extensions of Remarks] [Pages 5423-5424] [From the U.S. 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 [[Page 5424]] 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. 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.'' ____________________