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Angry Fax Doesn't Mean He Is a Killer, Asserts Prime Suspect In Vancouver Editor's Murder

Arthur J Pais

The 38-year-old self-proclaimed Khalistani "freedom-fighter," who was questioned for several hours last week by the police in Vancouver in connection with the murder of publisher and editor Tara Singh Hayer last November, is convinced that he is being railroaded.

While repeatedly asserting that he had nothing to do with Hayer's murder, Inderjit Singh said in many interviews that he was not sorry Hayer was killed. "He was always writing against our culture," Singh told reporters "He was a kind of tout. He was serving the Indian government."

The Vancouver police are desperate to find "any" murderer, he says, asserting that on November 18, the day of the murder, he was in Edmonton, his home town, some 700 miles from Vancouver. And he is convinced the police back home in Jullunder are after him, and that is why he did not go to his hometown or to Amritsar to participate in the celebrations to mark the 300th anniversary of the Khalsa. When he phoned his relatives in Punjab, he says, they told him the police were looking for him.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced last night that Hayer's murder arose from a personal grudge.

Singh, a top leader of the radical International Sikh Youth Federation, says he has no regrets that Hayer was killed but he was not in anyway involved in the murder. In fact, he believes that the police consider him a suspect because he faxed a letter to Hayer, a few days before he was killed, according to Edmonton publications. The fax was sent in response to an editorial Hayer had published criticizing the then Sikh high priest, Bhai Ranjit Singh, who had excommunicated Hayer for supporting the moderates. Among Hayer's transgressions, according to the fundamentalists, was his support for the use of tables and chairs in the gurdwaras and his relentless criticism of Khalistanis.

"He was bad-mouthing Ranjit Singh and I felt very bad," Singh told reporters on Sunday.

The fax reportedly read: 'First you were put in diapers because of what you wrote and now how many wheelchairs will be needed for others.'

Hayer was paralyzed from the waist down after he was shot by a Sikh militant youth in 1986.

Singh asserted in interviews that he was not threatening Hayer.

He was upset that first Hayer sold his newspaper -- Indo-Canadian Times -- for many years supporting the militants, and by putting their pictures on page 1, and "then turning around, calling them worst names."

Saying that the RCMP tactics have upset him, Singh said: "My wife is crying and my children are asking me why I am on TV."

Singh drives a taxi cab, and also owns a truck which he says he was using to clear snow on Edmonton Streets on November17 and 18..

"Sikhs never lie," he says.

Singh who will take a lie-detector test on July 21. He says he owns the truck and not only he is insured to drive it.

But newspapers and television stations quoted Edmonton's city officials who said that a distinction should be made between the certainty that Singh's truck was at the site of snow-clearance and the certainty that he was working on the streets. Several Sikhs were reportedly used in the snow-clearance operation on November 17 and 18.

Singh says he has given the police the names of more than 50 people who were hauling snow that night.

The ISYF has rallied to Singh's support, with several of its leaders reportedly contacting top defense attorneys in Edmonton and Vancouver.

Meanwhile, both liberal and fundamentalist leaders in Vancouver and Edmonton fear that the festering wounds would start bleeding again.

Moderates in Vancouver have, while welcoming the progress in police investigation, firmly voiced their convictions that Hayer's murder was part of a deep conspiracy to eliminate the moderate leadership. This view is held by Dave Singh, son of Hayer, and his sister Rupinder Singh.

The Hayer family members have repeatedly drubbed the killer of Tara Singh as "cold blooded cowards."

"These men and women exist here and go around killing just the way they do in Punjab because there are so many loopholes in Canadian laws," Dave Singh Hayer had said in an interview a few months ago. "That is why it took such a long time for the police to track down the suspect in my father's death -- and that is why the people who blew up the Air India plane are not even arrested, even though millions of dollars have been spent for more than a decade in investigating the worst act of terrorism in Canada."

Dave Singh Hayer believes the sooner the murder suspects are nabbed, prosecuted and sentenced, the sooner will the Sikh population in Canada walk with dignity and peace.

But some Sikhs differ with him. They believe that unless the police have a perfect case, they should not go after Inderjit Singh. And they expect new conflict between moderates and hard-liners. "All those issues Hayer discussed in his editorials will come to hunt us," said one community leader.

In Edmonton, there has been relatively some peace between the Sikh factions but leaders wonder how long it could last. There are four gurdwaras in Edmonton; the ISYF controls one, and the moderate factions, the other. Like many of the gurdwaras across Canada and the United States controlled by the fundamentalists, the ISYF controlled Edmonton gurdwara, too displays pictures of "freedom fighters" killed in India.

"If Inderjit Singh is not charged, people may forget the bitterness that has been surfacing in the last few days," says community leader Harbarkhash Singh Sandhar. "Otherwise, there could be much finger-pointing or even riots."

Meanwhile, Inderjit Singh asserts: "Somebody has given them (the police) the wrong information."

He readily admits that he has been travelling to Vancouver and other parts of British Columbia to meet with Sikh militants but insists that none of them have broken the law.

Singh has lived in Canada for nearly 18 years, most of them in Edmonton. "I believe in God," he says. "I got to pray and I support the freedom fighters."

As for the police, he is convinced that they are after him because of his support for the radical Sikhs. "The police are wasting their time."

Next story: 'Living Tantra' Seminars Offered At Himalayan International Institute

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