TRONTO: Peel Region police are searching for the killer of a respected Sikh leader and human rights activist shot outside his Brampton home.
And while police are refusing comment on whether Balbir Singh Brars murder is linked to the intense rivalry and hatred between different factions of the Sikh community fighting for control of several Metro area temples community leaders are not so reluctant
Brar died they say because of his determination to speak out about the controversial $4 million sais of a parcel of land highway 400 and Rutherford in Vaughan. Brar who was scheduled to meet with a Toronto Star reporter soon to discuss his concerns belonged according to sources to a faction within the Sikh community that opposed the sale of the land.
But others see a possible link in Dec.6 nomination of Realtor Gurbax-Maihi as Liberal candidate in the federal riding of Bramalea-Gore-Malton.
Brar attended the spirited meeting as did some 5000 others along with a dozen Metro police officers. They were called in as insurance after the riding associations 1991 annual meeting erupted into chaos when a fight broke out.
But Sundays meeting while lively was orderly and a police investigation so far shows that Brar who attended a post-meeting celebration may have accepted a ride home because he’d been drinking.
That’s where his wife Rajinder found the 58-year-old immigration consultant at 8 a.m. Dec.7 shot several times at close range.
He was lying in the driveway in front of the garage door with a trail of blood leading to a shattered glass pane in the front door of the semi-detached house on Foxacre Row.
It was the 10th murder of 1992 in Peel Region and the third of the year involving a member of Peels Sikh community.
Brars slaying police said is similar to the Sept.19 killing of Gurdia Singh Sandhu 45 who was shot by a man who knocked on the door of his Brampton house. Salinder Singh Dhillon of Newgate Place in Brampton is charged.
And last Jan.3 Joginder Singh Brar 44 (no relation) of Mississauga was stabbed to death in front of a Missassauga auto body shop. Mamalieet Singh Toor26 of Etobicoke is charged with first-degree murder.
Darshan Singh Balbir Singh Brars friend and business partner described the dead man as “a very good man for the community-a very clear-thinking man.”
Brar recently left the Vancouver-based International Sikh Youth Federation (Panthic) to found the Ontario Sikh Council which friends describe as a group dedicated to temple reform. He was also chairperson of a United Nations Sikh human rights committee where he led the successful fight to release a Sikh activist imprisonment in India. (Courtesy Toronto Star)
Article extracted from this publication >> December 18, 1992
