Ripudaman Singh Malik, hailing from Punjab and currently based in British Columbia is one of the two terrorists remanded to judicial custody in Vancouver, British Columbia. Malik use to belong to Babbar Khalsa, a terrorist outfit responsible for many terrorist incidents in Punjab. He was also a close associate of Talwinder Singh Parmar, who headed one of the Babbar Khalsa factions before being killed by the Punjab Police in 1992. Malik, who came to Canada in 1972 started off as a cab driver to later became a wealthy businessman.

He is believed to have assisted in funding the bombing of the Kanishka. Malik was the President of a 16,000-member Vancouver based Khalsa Credit Union (KCU) that reportedly has assets worth $110 million.

The Khalsa schools in Surrey and Vancouver were both started by Mr. Malik, a prominent Vancouver businessman, and get about $3-million a year from the province. These educational institutions and the KCU have on many occasions been controversial due to the monetary assistance they have reportedly provided to the widow of Talvinder Singh Parmar. .

The Surrey school, which opened in 1986, has about 1,100 students enrolled from kindergarten to Grade 10, while the Vancouver school, which opened in 1989, has about 200 students enrolled in kindergarten to Grade 7.

Mr. Malik is director of the schools and president of the two charitable societies -- the Satnam Education Society and the Satnam Trust -- that operate out of the Surrey school, where he was arrested last Friday.

Malik had contributed financially to the Federal Liberal Party and had also attended fundraising functions for the Canadian Premier Jean Chretien. Sources in Canada have said that the RCMP conducted extensive raids in 1999 on KCU to scrutinize the activities of the International Sikh Youth Federation who held their meetings at the KCU-affiliated Khalsa school. Malik alongwith Ajaib Singh Bagri belong to the fundamentalist wing of the Sikh community in Canada and are reported to have waged a often violent clash with the more moderate functions for the control of lucrative gurudwaras.

Two sons of Ripudaman Singh Malik