REVIEW OF BLACKLIST

REVIEW OF BLACKLIST
TRIBUNE ANALYSIS
Khalistan ideologues major beneficiaries 
Prabhjot Singh
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 14
A review of the blacklist of Sikh separatists and militants by the Union Home Ministry last month has benefited dreaded organisation Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) and Khalistan ideologues the most.

Incidentally, the chiefs of all the four infamous Sikh militant bodies -- Wadhawa Singh Babbar alias Chacha (BKI), Paramjit Singh Panjwar (Khalistan Commando Force), Ranjit Singh alias Neeta of Khalistan Zindabad Force and Lakhbir Singh Rode and Satinder Pal Singh Gill (International Youth Federation) have made it off the list. Key Khalistan ideologues, including octogenarian Ganga Singh Dhillon of Nankana Sahib Foundation, Gurmeet Singh Aulakh and Gian Singh Sandhu, too, fall in this category.

Ganga Singh Dhillon was the guest of honour at the World Sikh Education conference held in Chandigarh in the early 1980s, the time when the struggle for Khalistan had just started.

After removal of their names from the blacklist, they are now legally permitted to visit India (subject to production of valid travel documents), though it will now be the responsibility of Indian missions abroad to process their applications in this connection, a source in the police department. Many of them have cases pending at police stations in Chandigarh, Punjab, Haryana and Delhi.

Interestingly, their present residences are in some of those countries with which India has extradition treaties signed since the late 1990s. Not many requests for extraditing them were pending with the countries of their present abode. Sources in the police and intelligence agencies were non-committal on the action they would initiate in case they, after clearance of their names from the blacklist, decided to visit India.

Four of them, including Paramjit Singh Panjwar and Wadhawa Singh Babbar, are known to have made Pakistan their new home. But changing global security scenario after the killing of Osama bin Laden may have given them the feeling of insecurity and uncertain future.

Intriguingly, while names of those in Pakistan have been cleared from the blacklist, yet they figure prominently in the list of 50 sent by the Government of India to Pakistan for handover.

Justice John C Major, who headed the Commission of Inquiry in the Kanishka blast case and was recently in Chandigarh, said that in Surrey, British Columbia, Sikh fundamentalists were more active than those in India. And a fairly large number of those whose names had been cleared were settled in and around Surrey.

Some of the Khalistan ideologues have made the US their home while a few BKI activists have chosen Germany and other European nations, including England.

Sources reveal that the Union Home Ministry had been under constant pressure from various Sikh bodies, both from India and overseas, to scrap the list. They had been advocating that those on the list be given the chance for a fair trial. They quote cases of Dr Sohan Singh and Dr Jagjit Singh Chohan, both Khalistan ideologues, and also of Wassan Singh Zaffarwal, who was once one of most dreaded militants. Once they were back in the mainstream, they faced the cases slapped against them and renounced militancy.

Prominent among those cleared 

* Lakhbir Singh Rode, Satinder Pal Singh Gill (International Sikh Youth Federation)

* Paramjit Singh Panjwar (Khalistan Commando Force)

* Jaswinder Parmar, Narinder Singh Parmar, Rajinder Kaur Parmar, Surinder Kaur Parmar (from the family of Talwinder Singh Parmar of BKI)

* Mehal Singh Babbar, Wadhawa Singh Chacha, Jagtar Singh, Daya Singh, Harinder Singh Babbar, Thekedar Jaswant Singh (Babbar Khalsa International)

* Ranjit Singh Neeta (Khalistan Zindabad Force)

* Ripudaman Singh Malik, Inderjit Singh Reyat (stood trial in Kanishka blast case)

The legal angle

Sources in the police and intelligence agencies non-committal on the action they would initiate in case those cleared off the blacklist decide to visit India. Also, while names of those in Pakistan have been cleared from the blacklist, yet they figure prominently in the list of 50 sent by the Government of India to Pakistan for handover