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About Tara Singh Hayer
- Tara Singh Hayer, OBC (November 15, 1936 – November 18, 1998) was an Indo-Canadian newspaper publisher who was murdered after reporting about terrorism and is recognized with provincial and national awards. Hayer was born in Paddi Jagir, a small village in Punjab, India.
- He emigrated to Canada in 1970, where he worked as a miner, teacher, truck-driver, manager of a trucking firm, and journalist before establishing a community newspaper, the Indo-Canadian Times, in 1978.
- He is the father of Surrey MLA Dave Hayer. Hayer initially supported a theocratic sectarian-based Sikh homeland called Khalistan in the Punjab region in India but after the continuous terrorist acts by Khalistani extremists against Sikhs and non-Sikhs in Punjab and the later bombing of Air India Flight 182 in 1985, Hayer began to speak out against violence in the Sikh separatist movement. In August 1988, he survived an attempt on his life that left him in a wheelchair.On October 15, 1995, Hayer gave an affidavit to the RCMP regarding a 1985 meeting in London, England in the offices of the Punjabi-language newspaper Des Pardes, where he overheard a conversation between Tarsem Singh Purewal, the editor of Des Pardes, and accused bomber Ajaib Singh Bagri.
- According to Hayer: "Bagri stayed talking to Purewal for about 1 hour during which time the subject of the Air India Flight 182 bombing came up.
- Purewal bestasked Bagri how he managed to do that.
- Bagri replied that they (the Babbar Khalsa) wanted the government of India to come on their knees and give them Khalistan.
- Bagri then said that if everything would have gone as planned the plane would have blown up at Heathrow airport with no passengers on it.
- But because the flight was a half hour or three quarters of an hour late, it blew up over the ocean.
- Purewal then asked how he managed to have the bomb inside the plane.
- Bagri said that when the device was ready, Surjan Singh Gill was supposed to take it to the airport but when it was ready and it was shown to him, he got scared and resigned from the Babbar Khalsa.
- Bagri then suggested to Talwinder Singh Parmar that they should kill Surjan Singh Gill but Parmar said no because that would bring suspicion on them and so they just warned Gill not to say anything.
- Bagri then said that he got someone else to take the bomb inside a suitcase to the Vancouver airport and put it on the plane." On January 24 of the following year, Purewal was killed near the offices of Des Pardes, leaving Hayer as the only other witness.
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