Tara Singh Hayer (November 15, 1936 – November 18, 1998) was an Indian-Canadian newspaper publisher and editor who was murdered after his outspoken criticism of fundamentalist violence and terrorism. In particular, he was a key witness in the trial of the Air India Flight 182 bombing.
Hayer was the founder of the Indo-Canadian Times, the largest and oldest Punjabi-language weekly newspaper in Canada and the leading Punjabi-language newspaper in North America. The paper—distributed in Canada, the United States, and England—was regularly used by Hayer to speak out against violent extremist groups.
He is the first, and one of the few journalists in Canada, to have been killed specifically for their work.
History
Personal life
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.
Publishing career
Hayer established a community newspaper, the Indo-Canadian Times, in 1978. The Times would go on to be the largest and oldest Punjabi-language weekly newspaper in Canada and the leading Punjabi-language newspaper in North America. Throughout his career, Hayer often reported about the "tensions" between the Government of India and Sikhs, both in Canada and abroad, who promote a separate country status for the Punjab area of India which would be called Khalistan," a theocratic sectarian-based Sikh homeland.
Hayer was a strong supporter of the Khalistan movement. However, 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 other words, though supporting the overall idea of Khalistan, he rejected the promotion of it through violent means. Moreover, following the Air India bombing, Hayer became a community contact for Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
In January 1986, a bomb targeting Hayer was left on the doorstep of his family’s print shop. Police were called after his son-in-law noticed the wires sticking out of a McDonald’s bag. In 1987, Hayer was able to meet Prime Minister Brian Mulroney during the prime minister's address to the Canadian Multicultural Press Association.
In 1988, Hayer wrote various editorials in his newspaper about how, while visiting a friend in 1985 in London, England, months after the Air India bombing, he overheard a conversation taking place in the offices of the Punjabi-language newspaper Des Pardes in which accused bomber Ajaib Singh Bagri described to Tarsem Singh Purewal, the editor of Des Pardes, how the bomb was smuggled onto Flight 182. Hayer began reporting this in April 1988, when he first named Bagri in his publication: "If you remember the Air India flight that blew up in midair, the police connected to this could be keeping an eye on Bagri." Subsequently, in July, he referred to "Talwinder Singh [Parmar] and Bagri having a hand in this." He followed up with more specificity in the August edition: "In 1985 in England, Bagri was talking noisily about his involvement in the blowing up of the Air India airplane."
A week after publishing his August report, Hayer survived an attempt on his life that left him in a wheelchair. He was shot in his newspaper office by Harkirat Singh Bagga, a youth who later pleaded guilty to attempted murder. Bagga turned out to be one of the suspects behind the Air India bombing: the .357 Magnum that he used was provided by a California man who was also the owner of a gun found in the residence of Inderjit Singh Reyat, the only person convicted in the Air India bombing.