HAMILTON, Ontario: Four of seven Canadian Sikhs, charged with plotting to bomb India’s Parliament buildings, were released from custody Friday on $50,000 bail each.
The bail hearing for the three other defendants in the conspiracy case was adjourned until next Wednesday.
The seven members of the Indian-Sikh religion were arrested June 14 and charged with conspiring with Sikhs in the Netherlands and India to “commit an indictable offense in the Republic of India”.
The charges also allege the suspects plotted other violent acts.
Prosecutor Dean Paquette argued all seven should be denied bail because of the severity of the charges.
Paquette said the defendants are members of the fundamentalist Sikh group Babbar Khalsa, which has advocated violence in achieving its goal of an independent Sikh nation in northwest India.
“It would be against the public interest to release them in view of the fact the charges are so serious,” Paquette said, “And there is still a motivation to continue the struggle.”
But the Judge hearing the case said that the argument was not strong enough to deny bail to Rampal Singh Dhillon, 27, of Brampton, Onlario; Ajaib Singh Bagri, 27, of Kamloops, British Columbia; Surmukh Singh Lakhaian, 32, and Daljit Singh Deol, both of Hamilton, 40 miles west of Toronto.
Documents presented in court included transcripts of wiretaps allegedly a recording of a plan in which Kaloe and Thiara discussed different ways to destroy the Parliament building and the difficulties at breaching security, evidence showed.
The pair allegedly talked of kidnapping the children of an unnamed Indian Member of Parliament to force a legislator to place ‘an unspecified item in the Parliament building.
Parmar is the leader of Babbar Khalsa and the Indian government has pressed Canada to extradite Parmar on charges of murdering two policemen in a Punjab village in 1981, Parmar denies the charges.
Two weeks ago, Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested five other members of Babbar Khalsa in Montreal in what the FBI said wwas a plot to bomb an Air-Indi Boeing 747 flying out of New York. A week earlier, four Sikhs were arrested after a visiting Punjab Cabinet Minister was shot and wounded when his car was forced off the road near Vancouver, British Columbia.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 4, 1986
