A day after Sikh community leader Ripudaman Singh Malik, 75, was shot dead in Canada, former British Columbia premier Ujjal Dosanjh on Friday said: “He played with violence all his life ostensibly and same way met a violent end.”
In 2005, a Canadian court acquitted Malik of his role in the 1985 mid-air bombing of Air India’s jumbo jet Kanishka that had taken off from Montreal. All 329 passengers and crew members were killed while the plane was flying over the Atlantic. Even Dosanjh was to board the plane, but luckily missed it.
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“The court in the judgment had pronounced that acquittal was not a badge of innocence as the police were not able to prove the case with evidence,” pointed the former premier, who said he had not spoken to Malik for many years but used to get information about him from various sources.
“I knew him in early 1970s… He changed before the Operation Bluestar and started keeping the company of radical elements,” recalled Dosanjh in a telephonic conversation with this reporter. Dosanjh also claimed that he had helped Malik open Khalsa schools.
{{/usCountry}}“I knew him in early 1970s… He changed before the Operation Bluestar and started keeping the company of radical elements,” recalled Dosanjh in a telephonic conversation with this reporter. Dosanjh also claimed that he had helped Malik open Khalsa schools.
{{/usCountry}}According to Dosanjh, Malik and his sons had run into trouble with a section of pro-Khalistanis over the control of the main gurdwara in Surrey. His finance company Khalsa Credit Union, which has 16,000 members, had also run into rough weather, he said.
Dosanjh said that Malik’s frequent visits to India, his meetings with the Indian agencies and a letter he wrote to the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January praising the initiatives for the community were closely watched by a section of diaspora in Canada, which was critical of it.