The Indian Government is running an intelligence operation designed to divide Canada’s Sikh community and neutralize the efforts of a separatist lobby that promotes a Sikh homeland in the Punjab.
A four month investigation by The Globe and Mail has discovered that at least four people were involved in the operation work under diplomatic cover at Indian consulates in Toronto and Vancouver.
Two others, one a refugee claimant and one awaiting landed immigrant status, have posed as religious zealots and taken over the International Sikh Youth Federation and turned it into a fanatical separatist group.
Their object is to discredit the mainline Sikh separatist movement through extremist activity.
Federal Government sources involved with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and police believe that there are many more and some agents provocateurs have been in place since 1982.
The youth federation was set up in England in September, 1984, and has been in Canada since last March or April. Police have evidence that the group was involved in violence in British Columbia’s Sikh community and may have been responsible for the beating in Toronto of an ant separatist Sikh who was a suspected Indian agent.
India has sent the Royal Canadian Mounted Police several intelligence reports implicating people associated with the youth federation in last June’s AirIndia disaster and with the explosion of a bag being transferred from a CP Air plane at Tokyo’s airport.
The crash of the AirIndia Boeing 747 off the coast of Ireland which is thought to have been caused by a bomb claimed 329 lives. In the Tokyo incident, two baggage handlers As a result of its activities in Canada, India itself may have been indirectly responsible for the two bombings. It certainly was in an excellent position to know of the bombings in advance. RCMP investigators believe Indian Government agents to be responsible for the bombings, although they have no firm proof.
The two tragedies destroyed more than a year of lobbying successes by the World Sikh Organization in Ottawa, Washington and Europe in support of the government in exile o Khalistan. Khalistan is the name chosen for the separate country the Sikhs want created in Punjab.
The youth federation, under the control of Indian Government agents, has sworn to destroy the government in exile and the World Sikh Organization. Posing as extreme Sikh separatists, the youth federation says the other groups are too moderate. Politicians had promised to take up the Sikh demand for an investigation into human rights violations and allegations that Sikhs were being massacred by Indian security forces in Punjab. After the tragedies, they began avoiding the lobbyists.
The federal Government also has evidence that Indian diplomats were responsible for a counter demonstration that disrupted a Sikh rally on Nov. 14, 1982, in downtown Toronto.
A Metro Toronto Police constable of East Indian origin was shot during the incident and two Sikhs are serving long jail terms for that shooting.
Consular operations include providing financial support for pro Indian groups that oppose the Sikh demand for a separate nation, gaining control of ethnic newspapers and spying on temples, separatist meetings and the private affairs of separatists.
Sources close to the Department of the Solicitor General say the department sent reports to the Department of External Affairs that confirm The Globe’s findings on the consulates. The Globe was made privy to information in these reports. However, Gar Pardy, chief of External Affairs Department’s Asia division, denied yesterday that any such information, either written or otherwise, about consular wrong doing, was ever made available to the ministry. Acting Indian High Commissioner S.J.S. Chatwal angrily rejected Globe findings and said: “There is no such thing. . . The whole thing is the figment of somebody’s imagination.”
Highly placed federal Government sources say the reports indicate that consulates in Toronto and Vancouver are engaged in systematically trying to destabilize the Canadian Sikh community.
Federal Government intelligence analysis reveals that these activities have succeeded in causing bitterness and hatred within the Sikh community and between Sikhs and Hindus. Such activities have also caused Canadians, in general, to turn against East Indians and Sikhs.
Ottawa has not acted on these reports because of India’s important position in the Commonwealth and because it is sensitive to India’s accusations that Canada harbors Sikh terrorists.
At the recent commonwealth conference, Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi expressed to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney his country’s anger over the fact that Sikh separatists live in Canada. The two men agreed to establish a bilateral extradition treaty next year that would be retroactive and cover several Sikh immigrants in Canada.
One result of this pressure has been that a special security committee made up of the External Affairs Department, CSIS, the Solicitor General’s office and the RCMP began sharing intelligence with Indian Officials.
“The ideal was to show them how much we are doing to check the so-called terrorists,” said one source close to the committee.
“The results have been disastrous. The same information would return to Canada, spiced up, and be leaked to the media by intelligence officers operating under diplomatic cover. In one instance, Indian operatives fed The Globe misleading information in order to send police investigating the AirIndia crash in a fruitless direction.
On the evening of June 23, about 15 hours after the AirIndia crash a senior Indian diplomat told The Globe that police in Canada were looking for two Sikhs Lal Singh and Ammand Singh of New York City in connection with the crash. Both men were also wanted by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation for conspiring to assassinate Mr. Gandhi.
The diplomat told The Globe that a check with CP Air would show an L. Singh listed on the airline computer. A Globe check confirmed the name was on the airliner’s computer and a story to that effect was published.
As a result of the story, police spent a lot of time looking for the two men who are now believed not to have been involved at all.
The Globe later learned that Indian Intelligence knew the two men might be in Canada from information Canadian authorities got from the FBI that was relayed to India by the security committee.
The Globe also learned that on June 20, a Sikh had paid cash for and picked up tickets previously reserved over the telephone in Vancouver for a CP Air flight to Tokyo and another to Bombay aboard Air India Flight 182.
The Sikh, now suspected of being an Indian agent or of being under the control of Indian agents, changed the name on the Tokyo ticket to L. Singh from A. Singh. The name on the Bombay ticket was M.Singh. Luggage was checked in using the two tickets, but the people checking in the baggage did not board the flight.
The Indian diplomat who spoke to The Globe would have had access to the CP Air passenger list via Air India because both Singhs were transferring to Air—India.
Federal Government sources say time is running out on the Indian intelligence game being played out in Canada.
Vancouver has already seen several violent incidents as the youth federation follows attempts to take over every Sikh temple in Canada and the World Sikh Organization. The youth federation has already taken over the Sikh temple on Pape Avenue in Toronto, where an earlier takeover vid in March 1982, led to a shooting in a courtroom that left two people dead and one
crippled for life.
Youth federation “disinformation” to the effect that the WSO was planning to take over the Ottawa based Federation of Sikh Societies of Canada decimated the broad based executive of that group at its annual meeting in Victoria on Nov. 10.
Article extracted from this publication >> November 29, 1985
