Reaction Of Air India Victims' Relatives

[>Bikramjit Singh<]

WJKK WJKF

I have just read some newspaper reports of the reactions of the victims' relatives after the not guilty verdict. We can all understand and sympathise with their loss but the reactions of some are totally idiotic. They cannot accept the verdicts and instead of putting pressure on the Canadian govt for an inpartial enquiry some seem to be hell bent on carrying out a campaign of vilification against two Sikhs who have been found not guilty of the crime they were charged with. I have highlighted some quotes from the following news story I read.

My own personal opinion is that the GOI did it and this view has been strengthened by the not guilty verdicts as well as the judgement made by the judge and the fact that the canadian govt has tried to put to innocent men in prison based on the testimony of three people who had a grudge against them and whose evidence was flimsy and who were described as unreliable.

After 1984 there was a worldwide campaign amongst Sikhs to boycott Air India. I myself have never flown by Air India and I would rather pay more and go by another airline rather than fly the airline of the country which did so much harm to our religion and which murdered so many of our fellow Sikhs. My view is that the victims chose to travel on Air India making a statement of their support for India at a time when the wounds of the Sikhs were still fresh. It would indeed be the supreme irony if the same government and country they chose to support brought down that plane so as to malign the Khalistan movement.

GurFateh

Bikramjit

Govt too demoralised to appeal: Relatives

Arthur J. Pais in New York | March 19, 2005 02:02 IST

Surjit Singh Kalsi has been praying at home and the Surrey gurdwara the whole of last week, as he has done for the last 20 years.

Kalsi, the secretary of the gurdwara, has been praying that the soul of his cousin, killed in the Air India Kanishka explosion would continue to have peace.

He also prayed that the two men facing judgment in a Vancouver court will be punished for plotting and abetting the worst mass murder in Canadian history, in which at least 80 of the 331 victims, including two bag handlers in Tokyo's Narita Airport, were children aged under 12 years.

He had been waiting for the moment, he said, when he could look into the faces of the two men charged with planning the explosions and mutter: "You will endlessly rot in hell."

Verdict has shattered everything

But when he came out of the courtroom after the judgment was passed, he was instead left wondering if he should believe in God at all.

"I don't feel like going to my gurdwara or any gurdwara for that matter," he said. "I ask God, 'How can we trust you?' I ask God, 'How can you let this judge not punish these mass murderers?'"

"My cousin Indira has been murdered twice, first when these terrorists, who call themselves Sikhs, blew up the plane and then now on Wednesday, when the judge acquitted Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajai Singh Bagri. I don't know if any good will come out even if the government appeals," said Kalsi.

If the government could not produce credible witnesses when Malik and Bagri were in a prison, he wondered, how could it make its case stronger in an appeal. "If at all there is an appeal," he added.

The government has a month's time to appeal.

Justice Kripal disappointed

But many relatives of the victims in the explosion that killed 329 people, who were aboard Air India's Kanishka, felt that the government, after having spent Canadian $100 million on the investigation and prosecution, might not have the will to go on an appeal.

The judgment has been a severe blow to the prosecution and it might need more than a month to gather its wits, relatives said.

"If witnesses were not ready to speak before the judge when Malik and Bagri were in the prison, will they have the courage to speak out now when Malik and Bagri are celebrating their victories?" wondered a grieving relative in Vancouver who asked not to be identified "I think everyone is demoralised."

"If the government has not been able to produce strong witnesses during the last 20 years," he wondered, "how can it succeed? Will it try for another 20 years?"

"I think a second trial will unnecessarily give hope to some families that justice could be found the second time but I think it is better to close this business down."

'He would never bomb a plane'

Indira Kaur was very close to her cousin, Surjit. Her father Rattan Singh Kalsi said he almost fainted when he heard the verdict. "People were sobbing in the court room," he continued. "I almost ran out, I wanted to breathe some fresh air."

He said he had suffered a nervous breakdown following Indira's death. "And I felt I can't have another nervous breakdown."

"I am not sure if any good will come out of the appeal," he added, "but if a public inquiry is held, much of what the government says is classified will be revealed, and that might lead to something conclusive and good."

Rattan Singh Kalsi who spoke from his nephew Surjit's home said he would return to his home in London, Ontario, about 3000 miles away.

We hope there will be an appeal

He added: "I am going back home thinking that the so called heroes of Khalistan are still walking around proudly, that among us there are murderers prospering and conspiring, and yet nobody seems to do anything about them."

"But I also tell myself that they have been acquitted by a small court," he said, his voice choking. "I believe there is a far bigger court and is presided over by God. These men cannot escape God's justice."

"God doesn't need to deal with shaky witnesses and judges who cannot see the obvious truth."

"I am telling you these mass murderers will be cursed by our gurus including Nanak Sahib."

If the government spent Canadian $100 million, it was because of its own inefficiency, suggested a few of the embittered relatives. It was not as if the government really wanted to find the guilty ones, they added.

"Had this been a tragedy that affected white, mainstream Anglo-Saxon Canadians, I think the response would have been very different," said Lata Pada, who lost her husband and two children.

'Why are we always the victims?'

Sanjay Lazar whose parents were also killed, said Ottawa had perceived the explosion and loss of lives "as an Indian tragedy, not a Canadian one."

Similar sentiments have been echoed many times during the past 20 years and the government and investigating agencies have consistently denied the allegations saying that the biggest obstacle to the investigation and filing of the charges was the wall of silence in the fractious Sikh community in Canada.

And yet some of the community leaders, including moderate Sikhs like Sarwan Singh Randhawa, who is also the general secretary of Khalsa Diwan Society, said they still retained some hope.

"They have Inderjit Singh Reyat behind the bars for many years and he has confessed to some degree," Randhawa said. "The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are saying they will continue the investigation. So, even now there might be a miracle."

The verdict: The families' agony

But like Surjit Singh Kalsi, his uncle Rattan and many others who spoke to rediff.com, Randhawa is also worried if the government will try to beef up the existing witnesses and run into the problems as in the just concluded trial.

Judge Ian Bruce Josephson had a lot of trouble with the credibility of the sole witness against Malik, who, apart from various businesses, also ran a credit society and school. The woman, whose name was protected, had testified that she "had a close relationship" with Malik and he had admitted in 1997, when she confronted him with a news report, that he had been deeply involved in the planning and execution of the plan. The woman reportedly had turned against Malik when he called her a <admin-profanity filter activated>. But she admitted during the cross examination that she still loved him and respected him.

"That surprise edges toward incredulity," the judge observed. "I am unable to rely on her evidence."

The government had also tried to coax Inderjit Singh Reyat, the only person convicted in the Air India bombing, to reveal crucial information on Malik and Bagri. But Reyat, who has always said he was innocent of the killings, kept dodging the questions and gave confusing answers that led the authorities to brand him a liar. Judge Josephson even called him an "unmitigated liar."

Reyat has said that he has been made a scapegoat because the government wanted to mollify the victims' families.

We wanted the accused to be hanged

Reyat, who had already served 10 years for a bombing on June 23 at Tokyo's Narita airport, has also served two of the five-year sentence handed out three years ago for his role in the explosion that killed 329 people on Kanishka off the Irish coast..

"His evidence (in Malik and Bagri's trial) was patently and pathetically fabricated in an attempt to minimize his involvement in his crime to an extreme degree," Josephson said in his ruling. "His hollow expression of remorse must have been a bitter pill for the families of the victims.

"If he harbored even the slightest degree of genuine remorse, he would have been more forthcoming."

When police questioned Reyat soon after the explosion and asked him about abetting militant Talwinder Singh Parmar, he had asserted he did not know anyone with that name.

But when the detectives showed him pictures of being with Parmar, he admitted the latter was his friend. He also said that Parmar had asked him to build an explosive device to be used for "a big job in India." But Reyat said he had no idea Parmar was asking him to build a bomb to blow up an airline.

Disastrous beginning, unfortunate end

Parmar, who fled to Pakistan and then arrived in India, was killed reportedly in an encounter with the police in India in 1992. Some accounts have him dying in police custody.

Reyat, who moved to England soon after the explosion and began working as an electrician in a car factory, was extradited to Canada after his three-year fight while in custody against extradition.

His wife and three children too came back to Canada. According to court documents, Malik paid over $50,000 to Reyat's wife Satnam Kaur Reyat. Five years ago, she pleaded guilty to defrauding the government of at least $109,000 in welfare payments.

Several moderate Sikhs in Vancouver said that Reyat and his family is too beholden to Malik that the jailed electrician will not rat on his benefactor and hero.

Could it be also possible that the witnesses, who had something or the other compromising in their past like violation of immigration status, were trying to please the government on one hand, and protect Malik and Bagri on the other hand, wondered some observers.

"If the government will try to change Reyat's mind, I doubt it will succeed," said Surjit Singh Khalsa with a sigh. "And I doubt it will nab other conspirators and witnesses "

[paul_84]

an appeal is impossible and there are not guilty ..its the f**kin GOI behind this----KHALISTAN ZINDABAAD!!

[buddasingh]

Most of the poor victims have been pawns of the RCMP and the local media, who started a hell bent hatred campaign against sikhs in 1985 and have been going increasingly berserk in creating realities that don't exist. The SHOCK at the verdict around the world was due to the fact that the world had been told that these people were guilty. The REALITY BASED SHOCK is that the RCMP and media have gotten away with their lies, tactics, and racism to get this far. Remember one man who is very likely innocent is still in jail.

The media in their effort to sensationalize, demonize, and make profits have exploited the grief of the victims under the veil of support for them. The VICTIMS has also become a media created concept beyond human reality not to care about the victims, but to demonize innocent people to be …. TERRORISTS, the other concept out of touch with reality.

It is ironic that... ON ONE HAND a large part of society irrationally empathizes with the VICTIM to the point of showing contempt for the judge’s decision without reading a judgment that almost lays the foundation for an illegal prosecution…and ON THE OTHER HAND the same VICTIMS say that society is racist.

A few of the responses are indeed idiotic. There is Eddie Madon. The poor kid should go for counseling to learn that it is wrong to be a racist against a whole group. Realities were created in his mind which vilified innocent people. He was in part raised by a racist police force who taught him to hate the sikh image for their own political purpose. His intellectual growth seemed to be stunted in exchange for hatred.

Because his father died does not give him an unlimited reign in spewing hatred. If this is acceptable then one could say that it’s OK for sikhs to vilify all Hindus because sikh families of horrific torture death and state terrorism amount to 10s of thousands of victims not 3 hundred.

People in Vancouver know that the “moderate voices” the good niggers who speak out in the community are largely a few village idiots. They are hardly capable putting together any intelligent thought on this. But they speak because the media paves the road for village idiots. There is no functioning democracy or freedom of speech for real sikhs. Real sikhs know through repeated experience that they may be heard as a peep only if they speak through an organization. Otherwise media simply won't give them any time or will misrepresent them.

The other people who paved the way are somewhat more intelligent punjabi’s. They were motivated by politics and stepped on their own community to help create the hatred and advance their own political agendas. They needed votes through gurudwaras. Many of them don’t comment much on air India now because they have done the damage and got their use out of vilifying sikhs. They are looking at bigger bucks and comfortable retirements.

They raised their sons and daughters care more about martinis and bleaching their identity like Michael Jackson bleached his face and proclaim "sikh" caste pride only when in the caste for political or economic gain. The sons and daughters of the sikhs who they hurt will never forget and as we mature and grow, we will expose them all for who they are and exactly what they did.