No closure yet for victims of Kanishka bombing
The recent targeted killing of former terror financier Ripudaman Singh Malik in Canada brought back painful memories of a mid-air blast in 1985 that killed 329 people on board an Air India flight. Malik was a prime accused in the terror attack on IC 182, better known as Kanishka, but managed to wriggle out because of a shoddy probe. A Canadian court had to acquit him after a co-accused and bomb maker took a plea bargain to turn approver and implicate Malik but went rogue.
Malik was closely associated with Babbar Khalsa faction leader Talwinder Singh Parmar, who allegedly plotted to blow up Kanishka to avenge Operation Blue Star. That Babbar Khalsa has ties with Pakistan’s deep state is common knowledge. The Canadian police had ample evidence of Malik frequently meeting Parmar in the run-up to the blast but chose to sit on it. Shockingly, police sleuths also stopped tailing Parmar a week before the blast. Tells you something about the terrorists’ sway in the then Canadian establishment. With Parmar getting killed in a Punjab Police encounter in 1992, the case lost its mastermind, and Malik became more assured. A money trail linking him with the approver’s wife was found insufficient by the trial court to convict him. In the end, only the approver was convicted.
From a ponytailed ganja smoker when he first emigrated to the UK, Malik grew deep pockets in Canada and became a Khalistani separatist. If that wasn’t metamorphosis enough, he of late was a vocal admirer of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and was reportedly tasked by the R&AW to bring fundamentalist elements in Punjab into the mainstream. Was that why he was eliminated? Only a thorough probe can tell. What is certain though is there is still no closure for the families of the victims of the bombing.
As for Khalistanis, a bit of mischief is already visible in Punjab and its neighbourhood with their graffiti surfacing in various places. Since pro-Khalistan Simranjit Singh Mann has just made it to the Lok Sabha, separatist elements are bound to get a fillip. With arms and drugs continuing to flow in from Pakistan, the inexperience of the AAP government in Punjab is extremely worrying if the situation were to escalate.