CBI charges ’84 hijacker with cheating, forgery

New Delhi, July 24

A dreaded pro-Khalistan terrorist, who had hijacked the Srinagar-New Delhi Indian Airlines flight in 1984 and taken it to Lahore, has now been charged by the CBI with cheating and forgery for acquiring an Afghan passport under assumed identity to migrate to Canada.

In a recent chargesheet filed here, the agency has accused Parminder Singh Saini alias Harfan Maula of acquiring a fake Afghan passport in the name of Balbir Singh while in Pakistan in 1995, CBI sources said.

The agency has said that Saini used this passport to migrate to Canada, where he got himself issued driving and social security licences on the basis of forged travel documents which he had acquired in Pakistan.

Sources said although the agency had taken over the case of hijacking initially registered by the Budgam police on July 5, 1984, it could not proceed because of conviction for the same crime in Pakistan, which had given the highest possible punishment to Saini.

He was later released and migrated to Canada using the fake identity of Balbir Singh, the sources said.

In its chargesheet filed in Patiala House Court, the CBI cited Letters Rogatory received from Canada where Saini was apprehended in 1995 after his fraud came to light, they said.

Saini was deported to India in 2010 after a long legal battle in Canada.

The hijacking had taken place on July 6, 1984 when the Indian Airlines flight IC 405 from Srinagar to New Delhi carrying 255 passengers and a crew of nine was forced to land in Lahore, Pakistan. The terrorists had demanded the release of prominent members of the All India Sikh Students Federation and USD 25 million.

Saini, believed to be the mastermind, surrendered along with seven accomplices after 17 hours, ending the ordeal for passengers. The Pakistan authorities refused to return these eight terrorists to India and carried out a trial in their own court, which sentenced them to death for hijacking.

Saini remained in Lahore Jail from 1984 to 1995. In December 1989, his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the then Benazir Bhutto government under a general amnesty scheme.

The Pakistan government released him in 1995 with instructions to leave for a country of his choice within a month, sources said, adding that it would not have been possible for a convicted terrorist to leave the country on the basis of a fake passport without a support mechanism. — PTI