SAN FRANCISCO, Ca: Bhai Jasbir Singh Bajwa’s appeal to grant him political asylum and the permission to allow him to stay in U.S.A. came up for arguments before the judges of the Nineth District Court of Appeals on Monday. Mr, Bajwa was represented by his attorney, Wade Cher~ nick, who argued that if Mr. Bajwa is deported to India it could spell immediate death and that is not hyperbole.

Mr Bajwa’s odyssey began in August, 1982, when Punjab State Police raided his house at village Dikoha, Jullundur District, and arrested him without warrants. Mr. Bajwa was held for nine days without bail and tortured brutally to extract a statement for his alleged involvement in a bombing of Chief Minister’s meeting and a murder case, When Mr. Bajwa ‘was released from the prison, on the intervention of Punjab and Haryana High Court, he was threatened that he would be gunned down if he spoke a word of torture, Most interestingly when Mr. Baj‘wa brought his torture to the notice of SS.P, Jullundur, he was told that there was no record of his arrest, what to say of any torture.

S, Jasbir Singh Bajwa was President of A.L.S.S.F. from 8284, took refuge in the Golden Temple, Amritsar, to save himself from further torture from the police. He saved himself from many attempts of the police to arrest him when he returned back to his village. When Bajwa found no other way from the execution of the police, he travelled to US.A, on a false passport within weeks of his arrival in January, 1985, immigration authorities took him into custody as a deportable alien. Since then he has been held without bail at facilities in Louisiana, Arizona and Texas.

Mr. Bajwa appealed for political asylum and withholding of deportation in April 1985. Immigration judge Thomas Y.K. Fong ruled in July of that year that Mr. Bajwa had not established “a well-founded fear or clear probability of persecution. Fong said in his oral opinion, “my observance of his demeanor during his testimony casts serious doubt on his credibility.

Fong’s decision was appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which affirmed it July 30, 1986.

In his plea for a reversal of the earlier decisions, Chernick argued before the appeals court Monday that Fong had failed to consider all the testimony in the case, including that Singh was in hiding during the three years he remained in India unmolested after his arrest and that a government attorney has indicated that there is a warrant for Singh‘s arrest and the State Department has said that the Indian government would “have in interest” in Singh because of his A.I.S.S.F. membership. Chernick also pointed out that although Singh held a high position in the A.L.S.S.F, it was low in comparison with that of Longowal, the most important ‘Sikh in India”.

Judge Cecil F. Poole said the {issues in the case were whether Singh’s credibility was supported by the evidence and whether there was substantial evidence outside the record that could be put into the record so the case could be remanded to the immigration court.

The appeals court is expected to take at Ieast a month, possibly several months, to issue an opinion on the case.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Article extracted from this publication >>  November 20, 1987