Gill Should Not Testify Before Major Commission
"Butcher of Punjab" Responsible for Tens of Thousands of Murders

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 3, 2007 – Former Punjab Director General of Police K.P. S. Gill is seeking to testify before the Major Commission, which is investigating the 1985 Air India disaster. His request comes in response to testimony from two officials of the Punjab Human Rights Organization (PHRO.)

"Gill should not testify because he is a terrorist," said Dr. Gurmit Singh Aulakh, President of the Council of Khalistan. "He is responsible for the murders of tens of thousands of Sikhs. Now he is portraying himself as some sort of expert on the Air India bombing." The Council of Khalistan, the government pro tempore of Khalistan, leads the struggle to liberate Khalistan from India.

Gill was denied passage to the Atlanta Olympics by every airline in 1996 because of his terrorism. He had to be sent to Atlanta in a special train and he was sent out as soon as the hockey game was over. 49 Members of the U.S. Congress wrote to the State Department, urging them not to give Gill a visa. In that same year, he was convicted of sexually harassing a senior IAS official. A few years ago when Gill was visiting Belgium, his turban was removed from him by Sikh activists, who then chased him down to his hotel. In 1999, he was quoted as saying that fake encounters "should occur" if they are "necessary." Many innocent people, including a three-year-old child, have been killed in such encounters. In 1994, the U.S. State Department reported that the Indian government paid out over 41,000 cash bounties to police officers for such killings.

Gill presided over more than 50,000 extrajudicial killings, which were exposed by the PHRO in a study begun by Sardar Jaswant Singh Khalra, who was picked up by the police in September 1995 and murdered in police custody in October of that year. Many of these were secret cremations, in which Sikhs were arrested, tortured, and murdered, then their bodies were secretly cremated and declared "unidentified." Their remains were never even given to their families. It was for exposing this brutal policy that Gill’s police arrested and murdered Sardar Khalra.

Gill serves as head of the Anti-Terrorist Institute of India, which has so far received $95 million in taxpayer funding from the government of Canada, and of the Institute for Conflict Management, which has received $65,000. "It is ironic that Gill heads an antiterrorism institute and he is a terrorist himself," said Dr. Aulakh. "Like most police officials, he has escaped any consequences of his actions. Gill should be tried for genocide."

Information recently released to Tehelka by the PHRO showed that Talwinder Singh Parmar, the leader of Babbar Khalsa (an organization significantly infiltrated and controlled by the Indian government) had identified Lakhbir Singh Brar (Rode), leader of the International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF), as the main culprit behind the bombing and as an Indian government agent. A police official, Harmail Singh Chandi, showing documents that were supposed to hve been destroyed, reported taht Parmar was murdered in police custody. It is clear that Parmar was killed to keep him from talking about Rode’s involvement. As a Canadian Security Investigative Service agent who was quoted in Zuhair Kashmeri and Brian McAndrew’s book Soft Target said, "If you really want to clear up the incidents quickly, take vans down to the Indian High Commission and the consulates in Toronto and Vancouver. We know it and they know it that they are involved."

"If Gill can testify, why not call Kashmeri and McAndrew? Former Member of Parliament David Kilgour, who wrote Betrayal: The Spy That Canada Abandoned, should also be invited to testify," Dr. Aulakh said. In his book Kilgour reports on a Canadian-Polish double agent named Ryszard Paszkowski, who was approached by representatives of the Indian regime, who asked him to participate in a second bombing because "the first one worked so well." Paszkowski should also be invited to testify.

A report issued by the Movement Against State Repression (MASR) shows that India admitted that it held 52,268 political prisoners under the repressive "Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act" (TADA), which expired in 1995. Many have been in illegal custody since 1984. According to Amnesty International, there are tens of thousands of other minorities being held as political prisoners in India. The Indian government has murdered over 250,000 Sikhs since 1984, more than 300,000 Christians in Nagaland, over 90,000 Muslims in Kashmir, tens of thousands of Christians and Muslims throughout the country, and tens of thousands of Tamils, Assamese, Manipuris, Dalits, Bodos, and others. The Indian Supreme Court called the Indian government's murders of Sikhs "worse than a genocide."

"How can anyone accept testimony of the representative of this bloody regime?" Dr. Aulakh asked. "In a free Khalistan, no one would accept those who carry out genocide against the Sikh religion and the Sikh Nation or against any other people," he said. "The Sikh Nation and the Sikh religion cannot flourish without political power. We must free Khalistan now."

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This material is circulated by the Council of Khalistan, which is registered with the Department of Justice (DOJ) in Washington, DC under the Foreign Agents Registration Act as an agent of the Council of Khalistan, Golden Temple, Amritsar, Punjab. The material is filed with the DOJ where the required registration is available for inspection. Registration does not indicate approval of the contents by the U.S. Government.