Updated:

• May 29: Click Manjit Singh Rattu (PDF FILE)

"NRI, Manjit Rattu is the most crooked, I've ever seen."
said Ontario Police officer

Toronto, May 20, 2006
NRI press

NRI, Manjit Singh Rattu is also known as Manjit Singh, Mumtaz Sharif Rattu, Mohammed Sharif Rattu is a very interesting guy and one of the best cons I have ever seen" said Peel Regional Police officer. He was arrested near Toronto last week on two counts of fraud over $10,000

Donnelly said the allegations in Ontario are similar in that Rattu allegedly swindled companies of computer and office equipment which he then used to open weekly newspapers. Within the past three months, he published a few issues each of The Daily Khalsa Samachar, The Financial Guardian and The Mississauga Citizen, listing the same contact information on the masthead of each newspaper.Some well-known politicians attended the launch of the newspaper, including Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion and Ontario Minister of Transportation Harinder Takhar.

False bank draft: (Sample)

• Mohan Virdi, owner of Nexgen Coputer in Toronto, was given false bank draft of $30, 000
• Jaswinder Sandhar, owner of Sandhar Furnitur, was given false bank draft of $15, 000
• Ravi Arora, owner of Vedaris Security system, was given false bank draft of $15, 000
• Rattu is also facing charges in Calgary and is the subject of fraud investigations in Niagara Falls, Yonkers, New York and England, Donnelly said.

According to report of Tribune in 2001, Manjit Singh Rattu, a small-time scribe, based in SAS Nagar during the peak of terrorism in the 1980s, had allegedly resurfaced in the city three months back under the new identity of R. Ahmed. He had claimed to be the chairman of the board of the international weekly bilingual newspapers, Pardes and News Of Punjab.

He had set up office here for publishing a newspaper, Pardes International Weekly, launched about a month back. The printline of the publication mentioned R. Ahmed as the chairman of the board of the newspaper and M.S. Rattu as the editor-in-chief and managing director.

Police sources informed that Rattu had close links with some of the top ultras in the state. He was also allegedly used by the Punjab Police to get information about terrorists.

He had reportedly been smuggled into Pakistan by the intelligence agencies to gather information. Once in Pakistan, he got married to a daughter of a senior functionary in Pakistan . However, when his identity became clear, he fled to England.

He reportedly stayed on in England for a couple of years and made a lot of money through illicit means. He had to flee England when his past caught up with him. He then came back to India.

Murdered Cases:

RCMP investigators have flown to Ontario to try to get information from a former B.C. resident in jail on fraud charges about the 1998 assassination of newspaper publisher Tara Singh Hayer. Rattu moved into the same office building as Hayer about a month before the Surrey publisher was assassinated on Nov. 18, 1998. Hayer expressed his concern about the mysterious journalist to a number of his friends and relatives. When Hayer was murdered, investigators said they wanted to talk to Rattu, but he had disappeared. Hayer was an outspoken figure in B.C.'s large Sikh community, regularly targeting Sikh fundamentalists in his columns, before he was killed. Hayer regularly condemned the 1985 bombing of Air India Flight 182, which killed 329 people. He survived an earlier assasination attempt in 1988, but it left him partially paralyzed.

Rattu's name has also arisen in connection with the 1995 assassination in Punjab of Chief Minister Beant Singh. Rattu had a meeting arranged with Singh the same day he was murdered, according to Punjab news reports at the time.

Indian intelligence agencies:

A double agent Mohammad, who worked for the Indian intelligence agencies and the militants, attracted the Police's attention in the 1980's after which he had to flee to neighboring Pakistan. From there he fled to England but maintained his ties with the Al-Qaeda militants. By the time British agencies closed in on him, a Punjabi weekly newspaper's editor, Tarsem Singh Purewal, had already been shot dead and Mohammad had fled the country. After he was spotted in Vancouver Canada where Tara Singh Hair, the editor of a local newspaper Indo-Canadian Times, was shot dead. Mohammad then entered another Canadian city, Calgary, and was finally nabbed, convicted and deported. Canadian and British authorities are investigating Mohammad's link with the above-mentioned killings in the U.K. and Canada.
Post deportation, Mohammad reached his previous hideout in Pakistan and then used the Punjab border to enter India. When several Punjabi dailies published stories about him he again entered England via Pakistan and Afganistan. The U.K. authorities raided several places in his search but all the addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses were fake.
The Sikh community in the U.S. is concerned that Mohammad alias M.S. Rattu alias M.Singh could now tarnish the image of the community as he some times sports a turban and a beard to act as Manjit Singh Rattu or becomes clean shaven to show himself as Mohammad Sharif. Mohammad Sharif also claims that he had interviewed the Sec. of State Collin Powell for half an hour in which Mr. Powell gave a few telephone numbers, that also included a phone number of a local Gurdawara president who allegedly smuggled some aliens to the U.S. Another member of a Sikh temple in the U.S. said that Mohammad tried to blackmail him by claiming that the Prime Minister of Canada will launch a book authored by him.

• Manjit Singh
• Mumtaz Sharif Rattu
• Mohammed Sharif Rattu

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• Belongs to Ramowal village in Mehatpur, Nakodar, Punjab
• Rattu has no legal status in Canada, having made an unsuccessful refugee claim in the 1990