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Canadian police hunt for Sikh trouble-makers
Toronto, Canada
April, 22, 2010
Canadian police has launched a big hunt for people behind the recent violence at two Sikh temples in Brampton on the outskirts of Toronto that has outraged the Sikh community as well as common people here.
In the first incident, former Akal Takht jathedar Darshan Singh Ragi was targeted at the Sikh Lehar Centre gurdwara here. Though Ragi survived, one of his close associate who is a known lawyer was stabbed with kirpan. The attackers were opposed to inviting Ragi who has been excommunicated by the Sikh clergy in Amritsar for his views on the Dasam Granth which was supposedly written by the last Sikh guru Gobind Singh.
With that incident just behind them after the arrest of the guilty, the Canadian Sikh community was rocked by the Sunday brawl at another gurdwara - the Guru Nanak Sikh Temple - where axes, swords, hammers and machetes were used by two factions locked in a battle for control of the shrine.
Police, who arrested three people at the time of the brawl, issued arrest warrants for two more radicals - Amarjit Singh Mann, 58, and Surjit Singh Atwal, 54 - for their role in the violence.
The community has reacted with outrage to the two incidents, with calls for deportation of the guilty. Since the kirpan has been used in these incidents to inflict violence, there have also been calls for limiting the size of the kirpan that baptized Sikhs wear.
Canada is home to more than half a million Sikhs, with most of them concentrated in the Toronto suburbs of Mississauga and Brampton and the Vancouver suburbs of Surrey and Delta.
At the time of terrorism in Punjab, many top pro-Khalistani leaders, including Talwinder Singh Parmar, took shelter in Canada, turning it into a hotbed of militancy in North America. It was Parmar who plotted the Air India Kanishka bombing. Parmer, who later entered India via Pakistan, was killed in an encounter by police in Punjab.
Canada banned radical Sikh organizations, including the Babbar Khalsa and the International Sikh Youth Federation, only recently, though their members continue to be active.
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