Brahminical conspiracy in Kanishka bombing to discredit Sikhs
Nothing has disturbed the minds of the Indian politicians and of those connected with the particular variety of Indian print media than the acquittal of wrongly accused Sikhs in the Kaniska destruction case. For anyone searching for the seamier side of the soul of “world’s largest democracy and the proportion of dark hatred in the cultural content of ‘world’s most ancient civilization”, the search appears to end here. Everyone who considers himself a patriotic Indian of the latest Hindutva brand is crying hoarse for a pound of the Sikh flesh and an ounce of Sikh blood. A variety of reasons, attuned to pseudo human right consideration are being churned out in the name of outraged conscience and phoney concern for skewed justice.
UPPER CASTE DISTRESS
One look at the daily papers indicates that everyone around is emphatically emphasizing the slogan of the queen of hearts in Alice in Wonderland, punishment first: trial later. If someone thinks these are strong words, that person will be struck by their extreme moderation by the time all facts connected with the ghastly and most condemnable events of June 23, 1985, have been related.
Let all the cards be put on the table before proceeding any further. The facts recalled here have been drawn mostly from the Canadian Govt. sponsored Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) report (called Report). This research was conducted by a team of five competent researchers who painstakingly worked for one full year from Oct. 1991 to Sept. 1992 on over 61, 129 pages of original govt. reports, investigation files and documents connected with the incident. It is classified by the Canadian Govt, as “Top Secret”. Soft Target by two very responsible journalists, Zuhair Kashmiri and Brian McAndrew (James Lorimer & company, Toronto, 1989, quoted here as Soft Target), has been used. Most of the material connected with the plane disaster available to the public has been kept in mind.
DEATH OF AIR INDIA FLIGHT
The judgment delivered (that is the version made available to the public) by Justice Josephson in A v Malik and Bagri 2005 BCSC350 (henceforth judgment) was extremely useful for an insight into the constraints of Canada. It is this March 16, 2005 judgment which has caused distress to a section of the vocal ultra-patriotic Indians and of course to the Government of India. Maloy Krishna Dhar’s Open Secrets (Manas Publications, New Delhi, 2005) is not so open on the main issues with which it is concerned, but has been seen. An attempt has been made to understand the context in which the episode took place. Death of Air India Flight 182 was, regrettably, not available.
The other plane prepared for similar fate that day, landed at the Narita Airport on time and explosion in its baggage hold took place while the luggage was being taken out. Two baggage handlers were killed. Air India flight number 182, the main subject of study, was scheduled to leave at 6.30, it actually took off at 8.15 p.m. one hour and forty-five minutes late (or one hour and fifty nine minutes late according to the Judgement, paragraph 37). The bomb explosion in its baggage hold took place when it was just an hour away (at 12:14 am-Judgment paragraph 39) from London where it was to stop for re-Fuelling. Had it been on time the bomb would have exploded exactly when baggage of those getting off at Heathrow would have been in the process of being removed from the compartment That would have been the exact repetition of what had happened at Narita Airport. The propaganda value of the event would have been immense and the loss of life minimal under the circumstances.
MADRAS EXPLOSION
It may be recalled that in on Aug.2. 1984 (10:52 pm), two suitcases meant for similar use had exploded at the Madras airport. Twenty-nine people had died and another 38 had been injured. The suitcases were meant for loading on Paris and London-bound Lanka planes. Had they been loaded on the designated planes, the explosions would have taken place after the planes had landed at destination. The incident was blamed on the Tamil Tigers fighting for independence in Lanka. This was condemned all around the world as it should have been and it justified the massacre of Tamil freedom fighters by the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka,
That it eventually led to the assassination of the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi is another matter. The modus operandi in all three cases is the same. This alone tells a complete tale to a forensic expert and one well versed with police investigation. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) later leant that the Madras explosion was caused by the secret agencies of the Govt. of India, particularly the Third Agency. The purpose was to justify harsh treatment of the Tamil Tigers in Lanka.
(Soft Target, pp.91,92,93: On Aug 2, 1984 at p.50 pm Laila Singh, a manager at Meenambakkam International airport in Madras, was told by an anonymous. telephone caller that two suitcases lying in the customs inspection area contained rock-blasting explosives and were set to blow up within a hour-warming was treated as hoax. The bombs went off at 10:52 pm killing 29 people and injuring 38 others. Local police linked the bombing to terrorists in Lanika).
Those for whom the information is insufficient to honestly apportion blame where it appears to belong. may just wait a while before passing judgment and may be requested to read on.
INDIAN AMBASSADOR AS CULPRIT
Why did the Air India Flight 182 leave late? It may be asked. It left late because it had to fit a spare aero plane engine in its luggage hold. It was to be carried to India. for repairs. It took inordinately long time to load it. The door had to be unhinged and the hinges had again to be put on. This delayed the plane by one hour and 45 (or fifty-nine) minutes (Soft Target, 72). To say the least, this threw the perpetrator out of gear or completely unhinged him. Extra load of the engine further slowed down the flight. What the culprit did in the circumstances was what has always been done in criminal history and would constitute a textbook approach in criminal jurisprudence. He tried to mislead the investigators and succeeded.
Before even the initial numbness caused by the extreme callousness of the act was gone, before even the airport computer has been scrutinized, that someone announced in an anonymous short article in the Globe and Mail that this explosion had been caused by two Sikhs who had bought tickets in the names of Amand (M) Singh and Lal (L.) Singh. This article appeared within 15 hours of the fatal explosion. An investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) revealed the name of the Indian Ambassador as the author that short article (Report, 114, Soft Target, 86).
RECKLESS ARREST OF SIKHS
It also suggested the line of investigation which the confused RCMP and the CSIS adopted to all outward appearances and for all practical purposes. The line of investigation he suggested was that two persons had checked in the luggage and had not boarded the flight and that this crime was the handiwork of “Sikh terrorists” (p.46). There is no doubt that this Indian official was a highly perceptive person with yogic abilities to tell the future and to influence it. His wife, children and a couple of friends were to travel on the ill-fated plane and he had all the tickets cancelled just in time to save them all. (Soft Target, 87). Consul General J.K. Sharma of the Indian Consulate at Vancouver had similarly changed his wife’s travel plans at the last minute. She too was to travel by the same plane.
Very soon the topmost security agency of India, (not) so very subtly, suggested the same line of investigation in the form of five questions it put to the RCMP. The Indian agencies worked overtime to ensure fulfillment of the prophecy, so confidently made by the country’s Consul. They arrested every Lal Singh and M. Singh who landed on the ports of India. One Lal Singh was confined to jail for two decades so as to be available at the time of giving evidence. He was promised freedom and a lot of money to give evidence when the trial was about to start. Another person in Germany was approached for the same purpose and on as generous terms. This blow for “justice” was a joint Indo-Canadian venture involving also the RCMP. These two grossly wronged good men bowed to the dictates of their conscience and declined to perjure themselves thus putting to shame two democratic countries swearing by the rule of law. Later proceedings indicate that other attempts at creating false evidence were slightly more successful.
KEHAR SINGH HANGED
Had the RCMP been more trusting right from the beginning, perhaps a different judgment could have been obtained. The official agencies of the Govt. of India did offer to try its trusted methods of obtaining sure conviction regardless of the guilt of the accused. They offered to torture the accused and their relatives, to buy witnesses and to intimidate them by available means. Had Canada, like India, been able to post a few pliable judges with easy conscience, a Sikh could have been hanged by every lamppost in Toronto. This method had worked to perfection in India.
Kehar Singh, whom no system of jurisprudence could have pronounced guilty, was hanged while the whole world looked on with dismay and the prominent judicial offices in India pronounced it a “judicial murder”. What more proof could Canada want of the success of the Indian methods? Again and again the Indian authorities reminded Canada that it was being “too soft” on the Sikhs. The attempt to get a clue to the identities of the suspects by asking a further set of 19 questions (Report, 51) was ignored by Canada, India, again and again banged its wise, aging head against the rock of such sticklers for law that the new flanged society in Canada had come to acquire.
MIND MANIPULATION
Had Canada played ball, there was nothing easier than securing conviction in the Kaniska case. India had worked hard to arrange matters that way. It had taken many concrete steps to make the Sikhs blameworthy in the Canadian mind. It had launched an operation to penetrate the Sikh society, with the object of making the Sikhs quarrel among themselves in their places of worship and with the Hindus outside them. This would have created favourable atmosphere for false witnesses to testify. Seamy stories planted regularly in the media. Had Canadian authorities not understood the manipulation trick, the Canadian society would have hated the Sikhs to the depth of its being.
A vigorous campaign of disinformation had been launched. During about a year prior to June 23, 1985, the Indian authorities had delivered more than 87 warnings which mentioned Indian aero planes, June 1985, bomb explosions, assassination of the ambassador, hijacks and the imaginary Sikh terrorists. Main object of the exercise was to indicate ominously that something horrendous was about to happen and that Canada should make advance preparations, in the classical Indian mode, to hang a couple of Sikhs for it. The secondary objective was to tire out the Canadian police force by crying wolf once too often so that it would be too confused to think for itself when the deed was done and would be eating out of India’s hands at that moment of crisis.
By way of abundant precaution, measures befitting a mature civilization had been taken well in advance to make the events happen to clock-like precision, India would have had no face to show to the world had the projected event not happened even after world wide propaganda to establish all Sikhs as terrorists. So everything was arranged well in advance. The people to be blamed had been mentioned in the warnings delivered by India.
Some like Ajaib Singh Bagri had been fattened like goats before the Bakari slaughter. One was given a 2 million dollar loan from an Indian govt. bank in Canada. Another person had been built up as “the most dangerous terrorist and a sworn enemy of India.
WHY HINDUS DESTROYED THEIR OWN PLANE
He was accused of crimes that took place in India even when he was abroad. A regular contact with him was maintained by the Indian Govt. His family was well looked after. Then all of a sudden he was arrested in Germany, when the master plan required his presence elsewhere. So the head of a prestigious Indian secret agency, advisor to the Indian Prime Minister, travelled all the way to Germany. and had him released (Report, 105) to be available for accusing when the mega-event happened. After the event he ostensibly refused to support the official version or he was tactically found to be better dead than alive.
So in the style of KGB and the Gestapo of the earlier part of the century, he was lured to India. arrested and eventually executed while in police custody. He became another one literally of hundreds of thousands of Sikhs to have been disposed of by Mera Bharat Mahan (my great India) as the slogan goes.
Those of the new generation, not conversant with the long established traditions of Hindutva may ask why the Indian Govt, interested in destroying its own plane and killing its own people to blame its own citizens?
INDIRA GANDHI AS. ENEMY OF SIKHS
How could they be expected to remember that from the beginning of history, the Indian state has instinctively found a violent solution to every vital problem it was confronted with? Who remembers the fate of Buddhists in ancient India or Communist Mongolia when even the violent partition of the country in 1947 (costing more than half a million lives where a simple exchange of population could have been a more effective solution) is hardly ever recalled for learning a lesson? What Iraq did to the Kurds is currently better known.
The large scale killing of Sikhs in almost all the North Indian cities, in early November 1984 was witnessed by journalists from all over the world who had come to record the funeral of Indira Gandhi.
The report filed by them concealed every vital detail of the event of Sikh massacre that they partly covered. Joe Clark, the Canadian Foreign Minister, who also witnessed it all, never opened his mouth to register even legitimate human right concerns. Nations that have high economic and political expectations live in glass houses; they do not cast stones.
Why was a plan to decimate the Sikhs ever conceived? It is an easy question to answer. Indira Gandhi of the notorious Nehru-Gandhi dynasty was an easily alarmed person. She had been thrown out of power for almost three years before her return in February 1980, she perceived the Indian politics to be tending that way again because of rising Hindu fundamentalism. She wanted to exploit the situation to her own political advantage while still retaining the fig Leat of being a secular person heading a non-communal political party in a democratic tradition. This was quite a tight rope walk but she performed it to perfection. (Soft Target, xiii).
THOUSANDS OF SIKHS KILLED
The ground was prepared for her by the ongoing Akali political agitation for autonomy and for retention of Punjab’s river water for internal use. In international terms the Sikhs were a defenseless people, just perfect sitting ducks. She created a “shadowy outfit known as the Third Agency in the early 1980s. This top secret organization to encourage extremist activity by Sikh radicals in Punjab. The aim was to really support for the govt. throughout the country. The countermeasures it inflicted upon Punjab in reaction to Sikh violence made the govt appear to be acting from strength and with leadership.
She was brutal to the Sikhs. clamped inhuman laws upon the Punjab, denied the democratic processes to the state, drained it of is river water, destroyed the holiest Sikh shrines and killed the Sikhs in hundreds of thousands. No one wanted to be caught on the side of fair play and justice for the sake of a minuscule Sikh minority. From Hindu nazi leaders like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to the communists anyone who was someone supported her measures against the Sikhs. Her dwindling electoral support was restored and her Congress Party won an unprecedented majority at the polls after her assassination. She obtained the object of her striving although she herself was killed in the process.
WHY AIR INDIA PLAN WAS BLOWN UP?
The propaganda blitz launched against the Sikhs to paint them as terrorists and to malign the whole community as violence prone was not limited to India. It was a campaign that was conducted all over the world. Agents inciting Sikhs to react violently were everywhere performing their duties efficiently. News of violence from one place was used to sow suspicion in all lands and to condemn the Sikhs everywhere.
Foreign govts, were prevented from looking at the Sikh freedom struggle in India with sympathy.
It was in this context that the propaganda value of blowing up an Air India plane was realized and the plot executed. It cannot be denied that the gamble paid off and almost the entire world was misled.
Those who knew the truth preferred to keep quiet for the fear of being considered freaks. What was the point of speaking up for the Sikhs who were a minuscule minority in every society? Wisdom dictated toeing the party line. Nations were persuaded to look the other way because India was perceived to be a country with a large middle class of prospective consumers of goods every country was keen to export.
Now that everything is over, the concern of the grieving relatives of those who perished in the plane crash and that of the assiduously benumbed lovers of truth may perhaps be addressed. It is a harsh reality that investigation in the case was not done with the view to arriving at the truth.
It is a tribute to the Canadian system of justice that make-belief did not pass muster with its courts.
It is time also to pay a tribute to the acumen of the RCMP, the CSIS. that in spite of the severe constraints, they kept the truth somewhere at the back of their minds and made only some half-hearted attempts at manufacturing evidence, that 100 under Indian influence. The American FBI appears to have been more loyal than the king in the matter of crafting evidence for the trial.
CANADA UNDERSTANDS HINDU MIND
Without immediately going into the factors responsible for the public stance of the Canadian investigating agencies, an attempt may be made to know whether they discovered the truth about the destruction of the plane or not. On going through the Security Intelligence Review Committee Report, one will be convinced that not only did the security agencies have a clear idea of those responsible for the disaster but that they were fully aware of the modus operandi and had kept an eye on every move made by the real criminal.
Canada had correctly identified the basic nature of the conflict between the Sikh people and the Indian govt. The Sikhs were perceived as being disturbed over the “increasing political power of the Hindu majority” and the govt. refusal to “provide the desired territory and autonomy” (Report, 1).
The assessment about the Govt. of India was that it was “frustrated over the activities of the Sikh nationalists” (Report, 7), and resorted to largescale violence against the Sikh religion and the people. Sikhs all over the world responded to these conditions prevailing in their original homeland.
Canada fully understood the measures being adopted by the Govt. of India to discredit the Sikhs all over the world. The Third Agency had been created for the purpose and the foreign lands including Canada had been inundated by spies working as agents de provocateur under the garb of diplomats. Their main assignment was to discredit the Sikhs by projecting them as violent prone, promoting internecine conflict in the Sikh society, fomenting Hindu-Sikh conflict and spreading disinformation about the Sikh people. The aim of the Govt. of India was to control and monitor the Sikh movement abroad and has been well documented by the authors of the Soft Target who had this information straight from the horse’s mouth. To keep in touch with reality, the Canadian police continuously monitored the management of the foreign print and the visual media by the Govt. of India officials.
TALWINDER SINGH PARMAR ROLE
In its threat perceptions conveyed to the Canadian security agencies the Indian Govt. tried to project their own agents as most dangerous terrorists. Just as it had done in innumerable cases in India, it fattened the goose by attributing violent activity to them in India and by projecting their attributed potential for violence abroad. This served the purpose of establishing their own agents as vocal Sikh nationalists. They could thus penetrate the group of real freedom fighters for the purpose of sabotaging the movement from within. They could also be relied upon to vouchsafe for the Govt. at a crucial time. They would at least be the obvious targets of blame in the public eye.
Talwinder Singh Parmar was one individual who was carefully built up by the Indian Govt. to perform the designated purpose. (Report, 6, 7, 102).
CANADA DISCOVERS INDIAN CONSPIRACY
He was accused of having killed two policemen at Daheru. The main source of this information was an affidavit by another policeman. The CSIS had come to know that according to reliable evidence he was in Nepal at the time of the alleged encounter with the police at Daheru. It discovered that he was well known to a friend of the ex-President of India (Report, 105), was meeting Indian Govt. officials and that his family was being helped and economically promoted by Govt. officials. He himself was perhaps being heavily financed by the Indian mission abroad. He did not eventually toe the govt. line and had to be eliminated while in the custody of the Indian police in the same manner as thousands of other Sikhs had been eliminated. This agent of the Govt. of India was posthumously acknowledged as having been guilty in the recent Kanishka trial. (Judgment, paragraph 1256).
The above does not leave anyone in doubt that the Canadian authorities were very well informed about the situation of the Sikhs in India and abroad. They knew full-well the attempts being made by the govt. to destroy them by all the means at its disposal. But does it also mean that Canada suspected the Indian Govt.’s hand in blowing up the plane? Initially, it appeared reluctant to believe that such an action by a responsible government was possible. Then they discovered the Indian Govt’s proneness 10 violence at every possible opportunity. India offered to use torture as tool of investigation in behalf of Canada law enforcing agencies.
Indian Counsel General was discovered destroying his own office to blame it on the Sikhs. An Indian diplomat who could plot the murder of 17 Sikhs on foreign land and who could plan to inflict violence upon a foreign journalist he did not like, could obviously go to any length.
Direct evidence was soon forth coming. More the investigating agencies thought about it the more suspicious they became. The further they probed, more enlightened they became.
Finally they became fully convinced that blowing up the plane was indeed the handiwork of the Govt. of India’s secret services (Soft Target, 85).
(It is now possible to suggest that political Canada had been intimidated into permitting the plane to blown up?)
ROLE OF R.A.W.
By and by the Canadian security agencies had unearthed the entire plan in as much detail as was possible without interrogating the real perpetrators. The person who had bought the tickets was identified with reasonable certainty He was RAW agent in Briti try Columbia. It almost certainly knew who had planted the bomb. At one time it was seriously suspected that the diplomatic “bags may have contained the bomb”. In the circumstances a call by an “East Indian male calling ostensibly from the Indian embassy on the evening of June 22, 1985, became significant. He had enquired whether the diplomatic bags had been placed on flight 182. Perhaps it was no coincidence that M. Singh whom the Indian Ambassador had identified as one of the persons who had checked in the lethal luggage was also discovered to have been a “prosperous East Indian businessman”. It is again significant that when the RCMP wanted to investigate the diplomatic mail issue, it was effectively prevented from doing so, obviously on political directions. It is easy to guess why this spanner was thrown into the wheels of investigation.
NO EVIDENCE AGAINST SIKHS
Independence of the investigating agencies had been compromised right from the beginning by the desires and dictates of the extremal Affairs Ministry, particularly those of Joe Clark, the external Affairs Minister. They had made known Canadian Govt.’s anxiety to keep India on its right side for economic and political reasons. Unwritten instructions to investigating agencies apparently required compromises with attempts to discover facts. On reading the SIRC report in this context, one is struck by the helplessness of the secret agencies which feel completely gagged on account of effective political interference. In spite of it all they need a word of praise for having still expressed themselves in favour of the truth in the fashion of medieval Sufi saints who braved the ruling orthodox Muslim establishments concern for the shariat while still giving full expression to their Intermost thoughts. With remarkable can dour they brought it on record that although the disaster was not a terrorist act, they are under orders to investigate it only as such. They also recorded the name of the actual culprit without investigating any further in that direction.
The report frankly admits that there is not a shred of evidence to accuse Ripudaman Singh Malik and yet the RCMP hauled him up before the court.
329 PEOPLE KILLED TO DISCREDIT SIKHS
Patriotic Indians may hold their heads high for India appears to have asserted itself over Canada in the grand manner of a colonial power imposing its will on a slave nation. It wanted to establish that as a sovereign it had done по wrong even when it had killed 329 human beings. This nehklank (blemish less) status of India was accepted by Canada with a bowed head and lowered gaze. But that does not mean that it gave in without coercion. India had to quite seriously threaten breaking off relations.
Canada knew that the Sikh people were being persecuted without a cause but patiently accepted censures by Indian bureaucrats about being “too soft” with them.
Such admonitions as vocal expressions of Indian contempt for Canadian law were accepted without a murmur. The Canadian Govt. bore insults and continued to share information at the instance of Joe Clark although it knew that it was being used to torture innocent people in India and to spread canards against the Sikh people world wide. A stop to it was put only at the initiative of conscientious individuals. Theplight of the poor beleaguered Sikhs of Canada was nobody’s concern. Canada as well as India appeared to believe that they owned the Sikhs in the fashion of slaves-owners of days gone by and asserted their right to make them as miserable as they could in this stage.
CANADA’S LOVE FOR JUSTICE
The hour in which Canada was forced to proceed with the trial against two Sikhs whom it knew very well to have been innocent, was the hour of India’s triumph. Judgment is the triumph of Canada’s love for justice but the behavior of the prosecution in asking for the trial and inventing, “crafting” “fabricating” (Paragraphs 741 and 744) almost every piece of evidence produced in the court is enough to make one feel that it was acting on promptings of a hidden force. Almast every one of the witnesses was, in the Indian terms, procured. In scathing criticism, of Ms.D, the court observed, “that the crown put words into her mouth”.
All of them were untrustworthy and lied to the court after taking an oath to tell the truth. One openly confessed to having received US$ 500,000. He was the American find.
(India’s triumph appears to have known no borders)
Uncle Sam, the only superman in today’s world also bent over backwards to please India. The Judge’s assessment of the witnesses is revealing. Going by the strong words used, it must have disgusted him no end. One is described as an “unmitigated liar under oath” whose evidence. “was patently and pathetically fabricated”.
The oft-repeated memoгу refreshing exercise” of the witnesses by the prosecution appears to have amused him. Mr. A testified to having an incriminating conversation with the accused at a spot which did not exist at the time, “I accept the defense submissions that the evidence of this witness is not only implausible but also impossible”, observed the judge. Of another witness, he writes “his credibility has been examined and found wanting to a very significant degree”. Citing of Reyat as witness and all the preparation that went into enabling him to be so cited appears to be a very murky judicial scandal in its own right. Maybe some day someone will go into it to the benefit of justice and fair play.
Certain other aspects of the judgment also require closer scrutiny. Fifth Count with which the accused are charged reads, they conspired “together, the one with the other or others of them and with Talwinder Singh Parmar”. This in itself is intriguing. It is transparent from the Report that Parmar is considered to be an agent and yet although he is accepted the main accused, the next logical step of implicating the principal, the real conspirator, is omitted. It is obliquely hinted that Parmar was perhaps the main accused (Judgment 1256). “Talwinder Singh Parmar is generally acknowledged by both Crown and defense to have been the leader in the conspiracy to commit these crimes”.
HINDU KILLERS OF INNOCENT SIKHS
Diplomatic baggage put on the plane is generally suspected to be the alternate source of the explosive material which caused the disaster.
The Judgment is able to determine that the explosion took place in the “luggage area 52” although the diplomatic baggage was just within five feet of it. It is remarkable that pretties location could be pin
pointed although “only five per cent of the aircraft (was) recovered” eventually.
“Mehr Licht” light. (let there be) more
The concerns of Indian politician, the Indian Govt. and the sanguine section of Indian media are still the same. They want the Sikhs to hang for the crimes of “mother India’s” devilish daughter and her son, so that her garments remain unsoiled for record. They have full-throated praise for the despoilers of god’s house and killers of hundreds of thousands of innocent Sikhs whom the authorities were duty bound to protect.
They do not know that dame history is more powerful than minions and charlatans masquerading as leaders of a great people. There must be sufficient number of lovers of truth all around the world to point out to them that all the Neptune’s oceans will not wash this blood from that little hand.
(akalsahaigurtejsingh@yahoo.com)
