The Kanisha Verdict

[Guest guest]

http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/mar/17spec2.htm

Rattan Singh Kalsi had travelled from Canada's east coast to Vancouver on the

other side of the country, in the hope that the two men charged with murder and

conspiracy to plant a bomb and blow up the Air-India 747 Kanishka on June 23,

1985 would be held guilty.

When the verdict came on Wednesday in a highly secure and packed courtroom, he

looked at his friends and family members first in bewilderment; a few minutes

later, he sobbed. His friends say he also prayed silently.

Kalsi, whose 21-year-old daughter died along with 325 people in the explosion on

the plane bound to India, sat speechless for many minutes after Judge Ian Bruce

Josephson acquitted Ripudaman Singh Malik, 58, and Ajaib Singh Bagri, 55,

saying the evidence against them was weak and suspect.

Kanishka bombing accused acquitted

The two men were also acquitted in a related case of an explosion at Tokyo's

Narita airport the same day in 1985 that killed two people.

Malik, a millionaire businessman, and Bagri, a sawmill worker and priest at a

small gurdwara near Vancouver, have been active in radical Sikh organisations

in Vancouver for more than 25 years. They were arrested four-and-a-half years

ago.

The trial was held in a secure courtroom newly built at a cost of Canadian $7.4 million.

"I wonder where was the need to have this trial?" Kalsi said. "We have never

stopped suffering. Now we will suffer more."His friends told rediff.com that he

could not understand how justice was allowed 'to be miscarried'."Many of the

victims' family members were shocked to see those two men smiling as they were

acquitted," said Kalsi's friend Sarwan Singh Randhawa, who is also the general

secretary of the Khalsa Diwan Society that runs arguably the largest and oldest

gurdwara in Vancouver.

'The law has many tricks in its bag'

Kalsi believes he should ask God to give him some justice. He told his friends

and family it was his only hope now."It must have been very difficult to say so

much," said his nephew in London, Ontario, Canada. "We are so upset with the

verdict we cannot even speak."There was plenty of sobbing and tears in the

court room after the ruling in the case that began 20 years ago and ended after

a 19-month-long trial.

The relatives of the victims could not stop crying outside the court either,

Randhawa said. He hurried to the gurdwara to meet journalists and reiterate his

demand for a public inquiry."I was sitting close to my friend Dave Hayer and he

was too stunned when the verdict came and he could have been crying too," said

Randhawa.Dave Hayer is the son of Tara Singh Hayer, the editor who turned

against the cult of violence, which wanted an independent Punjab nation called

Khalistan. Dave is also a member of the British Columbia Assembly.When Dave

Hayer left his home in Victoria for the courtroom on Wednesday, a journey that

takes about two hours, he also prayed hard for justice to be done for his

father's murder, 13 years after the Air-India bombing.

'The healing will begin'

He was convinced Malik and Bagri were indirectly responsible for the crime and

various acts of violence lashed out at moderate and left-leaning Sikhs. Hayer

is convinced his father was shot dead because he had been critical of the Sikh

militants and the way the investigation into the 1985 bombing was being

conducted."He wanted people to have moral courage," Dave Hayer had told

rediff.com in an interview several years ago, "and tell the authorities who

were the men and women behind this mass murder".

Hayer sat in the court along with some 70 relatives of the victims who had

arrived from more than 10 countries. Some had arrived two days before the

verdict, so that they could meet the relatives of other victims.

"Dave came to the court for two reasons," Randhawa said. "First, he has been

hoping for a long time, and he must have told you too, that once these two men

are found guilty, many people who know about other acts of violence (like the

murder of Tara Singh Hayer) would come forward, and the persons responsible for

his father's murder would be arrested and tried.

Kanishka: The horror revisited

"Secondly, like many other peace-loving Sikhs, he wanted the world to know that

most of us hate violence, and we want to live in peace anywhere."

Many relatives and friends of victims called the ruling devastating and urged

the government to establish a public inquiry into the crime and the way it was

investigated.

"This horrible act of violence and terrorism took place in a peaceful,

democratic country called Canada," Randhawa said. "Today these two men walked

away. But does it mean that we will never know what exactly happened?"The

government had spent about $100 million into the investigation and trials and

yet we do not know who put the bombs in the plane," he said. "It is

unbelievable.

"The public wants to know," Randhawa continued. "We want to know and the world

wants to know if the guilty would be brought to justice. It is not just Sikhs

and Indians."I was stunned and choked when the verdict came," he said. "The

verdict is not fair to the families who lost their loved ones in this terrible

crime. Who did it? There should be a public inquiry."Witnesses and people in

the know about the 1985 conspiracy would not speak to investigators despite

various incentives the government had offered over the years. The incentives

included an offer to place some people in the witness protection programme.

People were too scared of the militants and acts of vendetta that could have

ensued after the testimony and affected their families. Why would they

cooperate with a public inquiry, Randhawa was asked by a reporter."I know, I

know about the witnesses," he said sighing.

Kanishka: The complete coverage

"But at least in a public inquiry we have some chance of asking the government

tough and relevant questions, how the government bungled the investigation or

what the government was doing when the militants began to take control of many

gurdwaras and began intimidating moderates."The government has 30 days to

appeal.In an earlier interview, Dave Hayer had said one of the reasons he

entered politics was to prove that there was no cowardly bone in him.

"I learned from my father to hold my head high when I was in the right," he

said, "and apologise when I made a mistake."Just before the verdict, Hayer had

told the local media that the world was watching how Canada was dealing with

terrorism. 'International terrorist groups are also watching,' he had told the

Vancouver Sun.Soon after the verdict, just as the relatives of many victims

emerged from the courtroom either sobbing or stunned, and a fear that the

government, which had already spent millions of dollars investigating the

bombing and building up the case, would not appeal, Hayer waited for the media

to seek his reaction.Facing the cameras and looking downcast, he declared he

was shocked and bewildered. 'I was looking for some closure,' he said, 'but

this is no closure. I think it also sends a message to terrorists: in Canada

you can blow up an airplane, kill innocent human beings and nothing will happen

to you.''After almost 20 years, nobody has been held accountable for this,' he

said.

He is not entirely right. There were radicals who began naming fellow

conspirators when the government offered them a lenient prison sentence.One

common reaction of the relatives of the victims was that they had been betrayed

once again. In interviews before the case had started, many had said the

militants had such a hold on potential witnesses that the latter would play all

kinds of duplicitous games with the government.

'Disputes hampered Kanishka probe'

The truth will never come out, many of the families who had bonded over the last

two decades and had an informal association to keep in touch with each other,

had said. But they also said they believed there would be some justice.Ottawa

lawyer Susheel Gupta, who has been mourning his mother's death in the bombing

when he was 12, felt that justice was denied. 'Whether these two men are guilty

or innocent, the reality is that nobody has been convicted for the actual

planning and execution of the crime,'he told the media.In Ottawa, Canada's

Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh, who was nearly killed for his outspoken

criticism of the Khalistanis when he was a rising politician and then the

province's highest legal officer, was also waiting for the verdict."The whole

key to the case was if people would somehow come forward and speak fearlessly

how we came to see this horrible event unfold," Dosanjh had told rediff.com

earlier.

He was British Columbia's premier (prime minister) for a year. A clean-shaven

politician, he is admired by moderate Sikhs across the country.As a former

Marxist who had turned to Gandhian thinking, he had come to abhor the use of

violence to achieve one's goals.

He was upset that many Khalistanis used the legacy of the revolutionary Bhagat

Singh to justify their violent struggle against the Indian government. "You

cannot draw a parallel between the two movements," he had said chatting with a

reporter during a San Jose seminar a few years ago to honor the memories of

Bhagat Singh