SURREY: A convicted Sikh hit man who shot a Surrey newspaper editor has been deported under a cloak of secrecy. Harkirar Singh Bagga, 23, was sentenced to 14 years following the failed attempt to assassinate Indo-Canadian Times Editor Tara Singh Hayer on Aug.26, 1988 Hayer was paralyzed below the waist.
Immigration Canada confirmed Bagga was put aboard a flight to Now Delhi at 5:10 pm. April 6.
“There was a deportation order against him and we were just walling for him to go through all his appeals. We received his travel documents from India on Tuesday and he was gone on Wednesday,” Said Immigration spokesman Phil Barter.
Bagga, who arrived in Canada as a refugee a few months before the shooting, was paroled.
Hayer said he was relieved that Bagga had been sent home.
He noted that a recent article in a militant Punjabi newspaper published in Vancouver had suggested Bagga would try to finish the job.
Hayer, an arch-enemy of violence committed in Canada by Supporters of a separate Sikh stale, said RCMP have told him he was the target of an assassination plot by Sikh militants.
Prosecutor Sean Madigan said at Bagga`s trail he was part of an international plot to kill Hayer.
It is thought Bagga, the son of a former Indian Army major who now lives in Ontario, was recruited by B.C-based militants visiting Pakistan in the late 1980s. .
“He (Bagga) only pulled the trigger,” Said Hayer. “There is no question those responsible for the conspiracy are still at large. There was a clear signal that he’d come after me again, at the instigation of others.”
Article extracted from this publication >> April 15, 1994
