Talwinder Singh Parmar

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Talwinder Singh Parmar was born in the Punjab, India on February 26, 1944. Parmar was a highranking member of a Sikh militant organisation group known as the Babbar Khalsa. Parmar carried out militant activities from outside India founding a chapter of the Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) in Canada (Vancouver) in 1979. Parmar later became a naturalized Canadian citizen and was wanted for extradition to India to face charges of murder and conspiracy.

Parmar preached at many Sikh temples in Canada and abroad. Although never formally charged, he was suspected of being the mastermind of the bombing of Air India Flight 182, on which 329 people including 82 children were killed. He is also allegedly said to have planned the Narita Airport Bombing.

On November 8, 1985, five months after the bombings of Flight 182 and the Narita Airport, The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) charged Talwinder Singh Parmar and Inderjit Singh Reyat with weapons, explosives and conspiracy offences after a raid on their homes. Reyat, a fellow member of the BKI, is convicted of the weapons offence and receives a fine of two thousand dollars. Due to lack of evidence the charges against Parmar are dropped and no link to the Air India bombing has ever been established.

Parmar returned to India and developed differences with the chief of the Babbar Khalsa Sukhdev Singh Babbar. In 1991 he broke from the Babbar Khalsa and formed the Azad Babbar Khalsa (Independent Babbar Khalsa). The circumstances of Parmar's death are unconfirmed. He was reportedly killed in a gunfight with the Indian police in Bombay on October 15, 1992. However, Canada's CBC network reported that Parmar had been in police custody for some time prior to his death, lending credence to those who claim Parmar was tortured before his execution at the hands of Indian police in what is known as a police encounter.