India: Resurgent Babbar Khalsa International

By Frank Hyland & Animesh Roul

This column is another in the ongoing series on the terrorist threat to India and the surrounding region by Frank Hyland and Animesh Roul.

The number of terrorist groups in the world that can claim to have killed more than 300 people in one attack is small, thankfully. Moving from northeast India to the northwest part of the country, though, one enters the self-claimed homeland of Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) - Khalistan. BKI is one of the groups that has earned that dubious distinction of killing more than 300 people in a single attack.

Most readers are all-too familiar with the infamous events of al-Qa’ida’s attacks on September 11, 2001 at New York City’s World Trade Center, a field in Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon just outside Washington, DC. Most, though, would probably be surprised to find out that, prior to 9/11, the aircraft-related terrorist attack that consumed the greatest number of lives was the BKI’s downing of Air India Flight 182 on June 23, 1985 as the aircraft neared Ireland on its way to Heathrow Airport near London. A total of 329 persons - 22 crew and 307 passengers - lost their lives when an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) concealed in a suitcase caused the Boeing 747 to disintegrate and fall into the sea, which was over a mile deep at that location. In a continuation of the senselessness of ethnic strife and the heritage-related irony, many of those killed aboard Flight 182 were Sikhs, in whose name BKI said it perpetrated its attacks. As a measure of BKI’s sophistication and its operational capability to coordinate its attacks, a twin assault was carried out by BKI in Tokyo’s Narita Airport on the same day, killing two baggage handlers and injuring four others. The IED aboard Air India Flight 182, it turned out, had been timed to detonate at Heathrow Airport and would have done so if the aircraft had not been delayed in leaving Canada.

BKI came into being in the 1970s, was formed by and is continued by a subset of India’s minority of the Sikh religion. The group, currently, is trying revive its armed strength and terrorist capabilities by setting up bases outside India, in North America (the US and Canada) and Europe.

The peak of Sikh militancy and associated carnage occurred during two years in the mid-1980s. A period of increasing Sikh militancy, armed attacks, and louder calls for a separate state culminated in the Indian Government’s assault on the Sikh holy temple at Amritsar on June 3, 1984 (operation Blue Star) to arrest Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, accused of directing and perpetrating acts of terrorism in the region.

Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence Directorate (ISID), suspected to be the supporters and/or directors of so many other terrorist groups in the area as part of the decades long “Cat’s Paw” sub rosa conflict with India, is believed to now be sheltering BKI’s present leader, Wadwaha Singh, and deputy leader, Mehal Singh. Indian requests for the extradition of the two to India have been met with no success; nor are they likely to result in their extradition in the future.

The mother of many subversive activities in India, ISID reportedly is coordinating and establishing linkages among Jammu & Kashmir-centric Islamic groups with the Sikh extremist leaders operating in foreign countries, as distant as Germany, Belgium, Norway and Canada. BKI’s Berlin meeting held in June 2007 under ISI’s directives was an eye opener for India’s ever complacent intelligence agencies. The meeting was attended by BKI, other pro-Khalistan groups - The International Sikh Youth Federation/Rhode (ISYF/R) and the Islamic Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). BKI, too, has ties with northeastern group Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isaac-Muivah (NSCN-IM), especially for obtaining arms and ammunitions.

BKI militants were suspected in the Ludhiana Cinema Hall blast (October 14, 2007) and Delhi Cinema Hall Blasts (May 22, 2005). In the Ludhiana blasts, seven people lost their lives and more than 40 were injured. The Delhi blasts (in Liberty and Satyam Cinema halls) were of low intensity; one person died and over 50 others were injured, including four who had triggered the blasts.

In recent weeks, Delhi police claimed to have foiled two major BKI terror plots. On March 17th, Delhi police arrested three Babbar Khalsa terrorists, including Paramjit Singh, a close confidante of BKI’s Jagtar Singh Hawara, with four kilos of RDX high explosives. Two days later, on March 19th, Delhi police foiled a similar BKI plot to assassinate key religious leaders, when they arrested two of their cadre from Jalandhar, Punjab.

Presently, Sikh militants have reportedly formed conglomerates to trigger sectarian conflict as well as to carry out targeted killings in India. BKI had planned the elimination of the Dera Sacha Sauda Chief Gurmit Ram Rahim Singh, Baba Bhaniarewala and certain other heads of religious sects in Punjab, and already unleashed militants to target some high-profile personalities, including former Punjab police chief K P S Gill, and All India Anti-Terrorist Front chief M S Bitta.

The fact that BKI has been relatively quiescent in recent years should provide small comfort, if any, to those whom it may target in the future. The group has demonstrated that it possesses the intent, the capability, the global presence, and the technical sophistication to reach out almost anywhere to kill those whom it wishes to target.

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