Indian travel agent who was subsequently prosecuted for fraud. The agent police alleged maintained foreign bank accounts for Indian officials. Such accounts are illegal in India but legal in Canada.
Toronto police said Samra had been given an Indian passport under an assumed name to facilitate his escape.
Police charged that the Sikh informant they were using was feeding Samra information as well.
The authorities allege that the main informant subsequently convicted for surgery was a double agent and on Indian Consulate payroll.
Police and Intelligence sources also allege the Indian consulate managed to infiltrate the demonstrations planned outside the Indian Consulate at the time of Asian Games in 1982.
The protests mounted by all the Toronto Gurdwaras against human rights excesses in Punjab were hijacked by Pro Indira Gandhi infiltrators who according to police reports then pushed other demonstrators to the ground and provoked them.
Tempers played, guns were pulled out and a police man as well as two others were shot and injured. Unlike the court shootout, Toronto police have obtained damming information of the demonstration.
Christopher Fernandes, an intelligence officer with Ethnic Branch, who was shot in the commotion and his partner unloaded their vast pile of information onto the security services of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police a mooth later.
Fernandes and his colleagues Teportedly assisted the National Counter Intelligence Service in probing the Indian missions in Canada.
Police claim to have evidence that on the morning of the shooting Vice Counsel Devinder Singh Ahluwalia and Consul General P.N, Soni had met with a number of Sikhs including some who would figure in the counter demonstration.
In addition to encouraging the counter demonstration police allege Soni and Ahlwalia had told the Sikhs that there would be shooting that afternoon. Police also allege that the Indian diplomats had spread a tale that a black man would drive up slowly ina van and that its rear doors would open spraying bullets on the anti-Indian Sikhs.
The police case had been bolstered by the bizarre involvement of Jatinder Sodhi a photographic and a friend of Abluwalia in the incident.
‘The Vice consul apparently showed up at his house after 11 pm on the night before the shooting and convinced him to photograph the demonstration for the Indian government,
An unsuspicious Jatinder took his two sons there to teach them photography. The three nearly got shot. Jatinder said in an interview that when he confronted the two diplomats about the incident and asked him why they had not warned him, “It became clear to me that they knew there was going to be violence.”
Police has also found that the Consulate had warned key Sikhs in Toronto that unless their demonstrations stopped, there would be violence in the city.
A subsequent analysis by CSIS found that the escape and the Indian Consulate shootings were the beginning of a covert Indian operation in Canada to destabilize the Sikh community and end any financial or moral support for Punjab.
Now it is revealed that Christopher Fernandes information compelled Corporal David Kapp a veteran officer in charge of foreign missions to prepare the case to seek Ottawa’s permission to put the Indian missions under surveillance.
On June 6, 1984 Jasbir Sigh Saini a 19 years old student, fired by the outrage at the Indian Army’s bloody attack and the GoIden Temple marched into the Indian consulate in Toronto, should antiIndira slogans and smashed a photograph before a lady private security guard chased him away.
The guard, told the police that on her return she saw Consul General Surinder Malik directing his staff to smash more photographs and furniture before the press show up.
Another witness collaborated her story but the police kept mum hoping to pin down Malik in court. Malik ducked an appearance, claiming diplomatic immunity, and the case against Jasbir Saini had to be dropped.
Canadian intelligence also suspect New Delhi’s role in attempting to subvert the World Sikh Organization being set up in the U.S. and Canada and the International Sikh Youth Federation in. UK and Canada in late 1984.
But, the report contends, “their task became difficult because neither organization had broken the law in the three countries.”
The article also mentions possible clues to the Kanishka blowing up killing 229 people off the Trish coast. Within an hour of this a bag destined for another Air Indian plane in Tokyo killing two. baggage handlers.
Key CSIS officials allege that after the crash the Indian Consulate constantly mislead them. They claim, that Malik leaked a story collectively to the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star blaming Lal Singh and Ammand Singh two Sikhs who were wanted for an alleged conspiracy to kill Rajiv Gandhi in U.S. as the Kanishka bombers.
Malik’s leak which was of course never substantiated and was a pack of lies, came within 16 hours of the bombing and painted a perfect picture of it.
CSIS is still puzzled by a spate of last minute cancellations for the doomed flight. Most of there cancellations were by Indian diplomats. The CSIS request to investigate the Indian role in the tragedy were resisted by both the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian External Affairs Ministry which in fact kept New Delhi abrert of the latest investigations, according to top intelligence agents.
CSIS finally got the external affairs ministry to get India to quietly withdraw diplomats who it figured were spies.
Amongst the Consulate officials asked to leave were Brij Mohan Lal, a former Brigadier in Indian Army stationed in Toronto, M.K. Dhar, a political consul stationed in Ottawa and Birinder Singh a senior superintendent stationed in Vancouver.
Surinder Malik had been transferred earlier as the Ambassador in Qutar.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 30, 1989
