Chandigarh: According to a press release issued the Dal Khalsa, [S]ikh leader Gajinder Singh living in exile has taken strong objection to his name being linked to alleged efforts to revive terror activities in India from Canadian soil saying his organisation Dal Khalsa was pursuing its political objective of Khalistan through peaceful and democratic means.
Reacting to the newspaper report pertaining to the effort to revive terror activities in Punjab by some Canada based hardliners in which his name has also been mentioned, he made it clear that he was fully aware of his responsibilities and his party line had no ambiguity. Linking his name to the people propagating armed struggle was not only unfortunate but also unjustified, he added.
Gajinder Singh said by linking his name to two persons in this case, the Indian rulers were trying to create phobia again with the only change being the replacement of Pakistan by Canada as the base. It may be mentioned that his name has been linked by the intelligence agencies to Mandhir Singh and Canada based Hardip Singh Nijjer for reviving terror activities in India.
He questioned the Facebook links being used by the agencies to target innocent persons. He clarified that the above two persons were his Facebook friends and were admirers of his writings especially poetry. He said some over-enthusiastic young people at time used provocative and hard language in communication with him but he has always counselled them to calm down. He said it was strange that the so called training camp in Canada had been linked to him through facebook.
He asserted he had never been involved in any militant activity in his life except the hijacking of a plane in September, 1981 to protest against the arrest of Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. He said he had always preferred pen over sword barring this hijacking. It seems that the Indian government was apprehending more threat from his pen and hence the design to involve him in such cases.
Gajinder said after the goodwill gestures by Canadian government towards its Sikhs population on Baisakhi, he had written that this would not be digested by the Indian agencies and effort would by be made to tarnish the image of the Sikhs in that country on some pretext. He said his apprehension had proved correct now.