Dal Khalsa co-founder and India Airlines plane hijacker Gajinder Singh dies of heart attack in Pakistan

GS Paul

Amritsar, July 5

Wanted terrorist and fugitive hijacker of an Indian Airlines (IA) flight to Lahore in 1981, Gajinder Singh, has died of heart attack at a hospital in Pakistan. He was 74.

Dal Khalsa spokesperson Paramjit Singh Mand said Gajinder’s daughter Bikramjit Kaur, who lives in the UK with her husband and two children, has confirmed the news. Gajinder’s wife Manjeet Kaur had passed away in Germany in January 2019.

Co-founder of radical outfit Dal Khalsa Gajinder was included in the list of 20 most wanted terrorists in 2002. He was among the five who had hijacked an IA plane carrying 111 passengers and six crew members on September 29, 1981, and forced it to land in Lahore, demanding the release of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and several other Khalistani extremists, and in protest against the death of 16 Sikhs in police firing at Chowk Mehta earlier that year.

The co-conspirators were Tejinder Pal Singh, Satnam Singh Paonta Sahib, Dalbir Singh and Karan Singh. They were arrested by Pakistan agencies on September 30, 1981, tried and were all awarded 14-year imprisonment by a special court in Lahore. They completed their sentence on October 31, 1994.

While Tejinder and Satnam had returned to India in 1997 and 1999, Dalbir and Karan managed to procure political asylum in Switzerland.

It is learnt that Gajinder flew to Germany in 1996, but was not allowed to enter the country after objections were raised by India. He somehow managed to go back to Pakistan.

Since then, his whereabouts were not known. While India had been seeking Gajinder’s deportation, Islamabad remained in denial mode about his presence on its land.

It was in September 2022 that he himself had revealed his location by posting his photo on his Facebook page while standing in front of Gurdwara Panja Sahib at Hasan Abdal in Pakistan’s Punjab province.

His social media page was also blocked in India for quite some time.

In September 2020, the five high priests headed by Akal Takht’s then officiating Jathedar Giani Harpreet Singh had decided to honour Gajinder with the title “Jilawatan Sikh Yodha” (Sikh warrior in-exile), but the ceremony could not be held.