Ripudaman Singh Malik, hailing from Punjab and currently
based in British Columbia is one of the two terrorists
remanded to judicial custody in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Malik use to belong to Babbar Khalsa, a terrorist outfit
responsible for many terrorist incidents in Punjab. He
was also a close associate of Talwinder Singh Parmar,
who headed one of the Babbar Khalsa factions before being
killed by the Punjab Police in 1992. Malik, who came to
Canada in 1972 started off as a cab driver to later became
a wealthy businessman.
He is believed to have assisted in funding the bombing
of the Kanishka. Malik was the President of a 16,000-member
Vancouver based Khalsa Credit Union (KCU) that reportedly
has assets worth $110 million.
The Khalsa schools in Surrey and Vancouver were both
started by Mr. Malik, a prominent Vancouver businessman,
and get about $3-million a year from the province. These
educational institutions and the KCU have on many occasions
been controversial due to the monetary assistance they
have reportedly provided to the widow of Talvinder Singh
Parmar. .
The Surrey school, which opened in 1986, has about 1,100
students enrolled from kindergarten to Grade 10, while
the Vancouver school, which opened in 1989, has about
200 students enrolled in kindergarten to Grade 7.
Mr. Malik is director of the schools and president of
the two charitable societies -- the Satnam Education Society
and the Satnam Trust -- that operate out of the Surrey
school, where he was arrested last Friday.
Malik had contributed financially to the Federal Liberal
Party and had also attended fundraising functions for
the Canadian Premier Jean Chretien. Sources in Canada
have said that the RCMP conducted extensive raids in 1999
on KCU to scrutinize the activities of the International
Sikh Youth Federation who held their meetings at the KCU-affiliated
Khalsa school. Malik alongwith Ajaib Singh Bagri belong
to the fundamentalist wing of the Sikh community in Canada
and are reported to have waged a often violent clash with
the more moderate functions for the control of lucrative
gurudwaras.
Two sons of Ripudaman Singh Malik