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Kanishka Bombers Linked with Sikh Editor's Murder, Says Son

Arthur J Pais in Vancouver

"If my father's murderers are nabbed, you can bet the authorities will be able to settle the [1985] Air-India bomb case once for all," says Dave Hayer, son of slain Indian-Canadian editor and publisher Tara Singh Hayer.

Dave Hayer believes that while one person pulled the trigger, there were a number of conspirators in his father's murder.

He was reacting to news reports that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police interviewed last week a member of the International Sikh Youth Federation in connection with the murder on November 18 last year.

A 38-year-old truck driver, Inderjit Singh, who was questioned for many hours last week has denied any role in Tara Singh Hayer's death. A frequent visitor to and worshipper at the Dashmesh Durbar Temple in Surrey, on the outskirts of Vancouver, he talks proudly of his links with the Khalistanis, hastening to add that such association does not make him a law-breaker or murderer.

Singh told reporters early this week that the night Hayer was assassinated, he was working with a snow-hauling unit of Edmonton City. "More than 50 people saw me that night," he said, adding that he has offered to take a lie-detector test. Father of two children, Singh said the police are "embarrassing and harassing me".

"These police, they do the same treatment as the Indian police," Singh, who has lived in Canada for nearly 17 years, asserted. He admitted that he was a member of the ISYF, and that he believes in Khalistan, an independent homeland for the Sikhs.

A former supporter of the Khalistani cause, Tara Singh Hayer had turned against the militants about six years ago, and had published numerous articles in his Punjabi weekly criticising them.

He had also been a consistent backer of moderates who were questioning the dictates of the hard-liners in the disputes in running gurdwaras in Canada.

His son has said many times that the extremists who were behind the Air-India bombing were also responsible for his father's murder. "These men and women cannot stand any dissidence, any moderate voices," said Dave Hayer who was in India several months ago to attend the celebrations of the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Khalsa. "They are doing the same thing here as in India - they terrorise us, and even threaten to harm our friends and relatives in India."

"There is a very thick wall of silence here," Hayer said. "People are afraid to talk, tell the police what they know and what they have seen.

"But once an opening is made in the wall, the cracks will widen."

Hayer is upset that the alleged perpetrators are making use of "liberal Canadian laws".

"When these laws were enacted, did the law-makers ever think that people who have no respect for others' lives will misuse them?" he asked, his voice soaring. "You bet they didn't."

Tara Singh, who had been attacked several times before the final shooting, was killed in his garage.

"He had been relentless in his criticism that the terrorists who were behind the Air-India blast had not been arrested," his son said. "He felt -- and many of us feel too -- that because of the action of a handful of people, the entire Sikh community has got a bad name."

The RCMP issued a statement on Tuesday, without naming anyone, that they are looking at "a long-term resident of the Sikh community in the Edmonton area". But the person is not a "suspect", the police added. He is a person of "foremost interest" in the case.

Many Sikh community leaders say the police, desperate to nail the killer or killers of Tara Singh Hayer and those who planted the bomb in the Air-India jumbo jet Kanishka, are using strong-arm tactics.

Meanwhile, Dave Hayer and his sister Rupinder continue to press for legislation to change the Immigration Act to permit deportation of any immigrant -- citizen or not -- convicted of terrorism.

The petition, circulated well before the publisher's murder, has so far gathered 16,000 signatures -- 90 per cent of them from Sikhs -- say supporters.

"But we need many more signatures," Dave Hayer said. There are about 150,000 Sikhs in British Columbia.

"I know our country needs tougher laws," Rupinder Hayer said. "If this is not stopped, it's not going to end here. There's going to be more bloodshed."

RELATED STORY:

Police Say Sikh Editor Was Victim of Personal Revenge

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