Sikh's Tale of Escape From Indian Justice

by Gursant Singh , Espanola New Mexico, Sunday, November 08, 2009, 09:38
edited by Gursant Singh, Saturday, May 22, 2010, 00:47

Wahe Guru Ji Ka Khalsa
Wahe Guru Ji Ki Fateh

I have decided to go public with my decision to leave India and flee from the corrupt Indian Police.

Truly,it was only by Guru's Grace I was able to escape with my life.

Today's Hukamnama from Darbar Sahib sums it all up;
"The One Lord is the Giver of all; the Lord alone is our friend."

English Translation :

SHALOK, THIRD MEHL:
One who serves his True Guru, is worshipped by everyone. Of all efforts, the supreme effort is the attainment of the Lord’s Name. Peace and tranquility come to dwell within the mind; meditating within the heart, there comes a lasting peace. The Ambrosial Amrit is his food, and the Ambrosial Amrit is his clothes; O Nanak, through the Naam, the Name of the Lord, greatness is obtained. || 1 || THIRD MEHL: O mind, listen to the Guru’s Teachings, and you shall obtain the treasure of virtue. The Lord, the Giver of peace, shall dwell in your mind, and your egotism and pride shall depart. O Nanak, when the Lord bestows His Glance of Grace, then, night and day, one centers his meditation on the Lord. || 2 || PAUREE: The Gurmukh is totally truthful, content and pure. Deception and wickedness have departed from within him, and he easily conquers his mind. There, the Divine Light and the essence of bliss are manifest, and ignorance is eliminated. Night and day, he sings the Glorious Praises of the Lord, and manifests the excellence of the Lord. The One Lord is the Giver of all; the Lord alone is our friend. || 9 ||

Sunday, 25th Katak (Samvat 541 Nanakshahi) (Page : 511)

Today's Santa Fe New Mexican Newspaper article

Local Sikh's tale of escape from India justice
By Tom Sharpe | The New Mexican

11/7/2009

Guru Sant Singh Khalsa returned to New Mexico last week, more than seven months after he jumped bail in India, where he says he is wanted as a fugitive from fraud charges.

"India is just bizarre, and the police control everything," the 52-year-old said in an interview Friday at a Santa Fe motel room, where he had a .38-caliber revolver sitting on a nearby dresser. "I realize now that there were other things going on there. They might try to list me as an international terrorist."

California-born Clark Harris converted from Christianity to Sikhism 30 years ago and was given his Sikh name by the late Yogi Bhajan, whose ashram near Española drew thousands of young converts such as Singh Khalsa in the 1970s.

Singh Khalsa's tale began two years ago, when he traveled to Amritsar, capital of the Indian Sikh state of Punjab. Singh Khalsa, who worked as a real-estate agent, said he wanted to have inexpensive dental work done there and, because he had recently divorced, he looked into finding a traditional Sikh bride through a marriage bureau.

On Jan. 12, 2008, he said, he and the marriage broker were confronted by the police and an Indian television reporter posing as a husband-seeker and accused of conspiring to defraud women. Singh Khalsa said he had paid the broker and didn't realize the broker was double-charging the women.

Singh Khalsa said that after two weeks in jail he was released on bond and allowed to travel within India and to take jobs in ashrams catering to spiritual tourists, but was banned from leaving the country.

At first, he was determined to clear his name, he said, but after spending thousands of rupees on lawyers, fees and bribes, and attending a dozen court hearings, Singh Khalsa realized the legal ordeal could continue for years. He said he began to plot his escape when he learned he was being investigated as a spy for the Khalistan or Sikh-separatist movement.

"They certainly didn't want to clear me because they'd lose complete face over that, so they just let things go on and on," he said. "I realized they were never going to give me any kind of fair trial over there. Not only do they linger these things on, but they'll bring whatever witnesses they want. They make up witnesses. It's just a complete thing for their aggrandizement."

Singh Khalsa said U.S. Embassy staff in New Delhi tacitly abetted his escape by issuing him a replacement passport, even though they knew his original had been confiscated by the courts. In April of this year, he took a train to the Sonali border crossing into Nepal and walked across.

"When I got to the border — they have their little customs and immigration booths right by the border — this one Indian immigration guy walked right in front of me," he said. "I thought, 'Oh, man, I'm going to get nailed.' But he didn't say anything. I looked Indian enough with a beard and everything. Some Kashmir Sikhs are pretty white."

An Indian friend later brought his luggage with his replacement passport into Nepal. But he still lacked an entrance or exit visa from India, as well as an entrance visa for Nepal. That took about $1,000 more in bribes to both Indian and Nepalese immigration officials, weeks of delicate negotiations and finally $200 worth of "whores and booze" for a final party for the immigration agents, he said.

On April 14, he boarded a commercial airliner in Katmandu bound for Qatar and, from there, to Washington, D.C. "When the U.S. customs agent said, 'Welcome back to the United States,' I said, 'You don't know how much that means to me.' "

Singh Khalsa said when he returned to Sombrillo to take care of business, he felt that he was persona non grata among the 3HO (healthy, happy, holy) community of American Sikh converts. He said one local leader told him, "We would have rather you just stayed there."

"To tell you the truth, I have been kind of a rebel," he said. "I have sued people in the community. I even almost sued Yogi Bhajan over some business deals. So when I was arrested over there, the feedback I got was they all thought I was guilty of this heinous crime, so they didn't want to have anything to do with it."

While back in New Mexico this summer, he met a traditional Sikh woman, a medical doctor from India living in London, over the Internet and flew to England to meet her. On July 10, they married in a Sikh ceremony in Chicago, where she has relatives. He is now trying to obtain a green card for her so they can resettle in California, where he hopes to open a spiritual-oriented medical clinic.

He declined to identify his new wife because, he said, her first two husbands had left her after taking her dowry, and public knowledge of that would shame her. "Divorce is a big thing in India," he said. "It's all about the family and ... they'll hold it against them forever. It's really shameful. It's always the woman's fault if there's divorce."

Singh Khalsa told his story while sitting at a table in a cheap motel on Cerrillos Road on Friday evening before heading west to visit his parents. He said his father helped him cover the $30,000 he spent during his two-year ordeal.

He said that although he is not worried about any official attempt to extradite him, he thinks there is a possibility that the Indian government or someone linked to it might try to sabotage him in the United States or even kidnap him and return him to India. He carries the revolver and said he is careful to keep his whereabouts confidential.

"I think probably I broke some U.S. laws by bribing these officials (via) the Foreign Corruption Practices Act, but I can't possibly see the State Department trying to prosecute me for that," he said. "No jury is going to convict me for getting out of there."

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.

Monday, January 25, 2010
http://www.abqjournal.com/north/252248498521north01-25-10.htm
Guru Recounts Big Escape From India

By Jessica Dyer
Journal Staff Writer
Guru Sant Singh Khalsa of Santa Fe might be the only fugitive in the world distributing a press release that details his escape from the law.
But his recent effort to spread the word about what he calls his "false charges" in India and his subsequent bribery-aided return to the United States are hardly the only peculiar details in Khalsa's two-year ordeal.
Arrested in the Indian city of Amritsar in 2008 for allegedly scamming potential wives he met through a marriage broker, the American Sikh said he's eager to spread the word about the "corruption" he faced in India and the lack of support he received from United States officials when he tried to fight the charges.
"What happened to me should be a warning to any American traveling abroad, especially India," Khalsa said in a press release issued this week to media throughout the world.
The strange tale begins more than two years ago.
Khalsa said he initially traveled to India to obtain low-cost dental care in 2007. While there, he decided to pursue an arranged marriage with an Indian-born Sikh and hired a marriage broker in Amritsar.
Though Khalsa was interested only in English speakers, he said his marriage broker set up meetings with non-English speakers, then secretly charged the women for the privilege.
When he did meet an English speaker, he said, she turned out to be a local television reporter working in an undercover sting operation with local police.
He was jailed for two weeks, accused of splitting fees the women paid with the broker.
Harminder Singh, the officer who arrested Khalsa, told a reporter in a 2008 telephone interview that "Guru Sant is a very good man" cheated by the marriage broker but that he is also "a little bit guilty."
He said Khalsa was accused of "money taking," specifically about 15,000 Indian rupees (about $350) from a single woman.
Harminder Singh said the broker "and Sant are taking money from the girls ... (The broker) is taking the money, but Sant, he is not really guilty ... just a little bit guilty."
Iqbal Singh, a senior police superintendent from a rural area outside of Amristar with whom Khalsa said he became close during his time in India, said in an e-mail interview this week that Khalsa was charged with "fraud or cheating." Though he had no direct involvement in the arrest, Singh said he became familiar with Khalsa's case through an employee of the American Embassy in New Delhi.
Asked if he thought there was enough evidence to arrest Khalsa on the charges, Singh said "not really."
Stuck in India
Even after getting out of jail, Khalsa said he was banned from leaving India while his case went through the courts.
But he tired of waiting.
"These cases go on for years and years and years. I went to hearing after hearing after hearing, and they changed the judge. The police have complete control over what witnesses come and if witnesses come," Khalsa said in an interview with the Journal this week. "If somebody doesn't show up for a hearing, they'll say, 'We'll just continue it for three or four months.' "
Khalsa said he requested that one of the judges give him his passport back, but he never received it.
He said he sought help from "all kinds of high-ranking officials" — including the U.S. Embassy and New Mexico's elected officials — to no avail.
He believes that, had any of them stepped up and spoken on his behalf, the case would've been dismissed. "But nobody wanted to do anything like that. They don't want to risk any political fallout," he said.
An e-mail to Steve Castonguay — whom Khalsa named as his contact at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi — yielded no additional details on the case.
"I am no longer in New Delhi and am forwarding your e-mail to the supervisor of the section for response to your questions. They will likely have to review Mr. Singh Khalsa's file to see if he has signed a privacy act allowing us to discuss his case with the media," Castonguay wrote in an e-mail reply Wednesday.
No one from the embassy has since followed up with the Journal.
Finding an escape
Khalsa said he decided to flee the country. He managed to walk across the border into Nepal, but he needed an exit visa to leave Nepal, something he couldn't easily obtain because he had to provide proof as to how he had entered the country.
He said he went to the U.S. Embassy in Kathmandu "and they weren't helpful at all. They said 'good
luck.' "
An attorney in Kathmandu told him to try bribery and put him in contact with immigration officials in Nepal. They had friends on the Indian side who took a bribe and created a false exit visa from India, Khalsa said. With it, Khalsa was able to obtain an official exit visa from Nepal. He then traveled from Kathmandu to Qatar, then to Washington, D.C. He's been back in Santa Fe for a few months.
Khalsa said that, though he had previously been involved with the Sikh community near Española, he's distanced himself since his return. He said he was disappointed by the lack of support he received from the group during his ordeal in India and feels he's a "persona non grata."
Daya Khalsa, a spokesman for the New Mexico Sikh community, said that he hasn't talked to Guru Sant Singh Khalsa about the ordeal in India but that he's welcome to be part of the community.
"He was consistently participating in certain aspects of the religious life here (before the 2007 trip to India), and I'm not sure what's changed, other than a very difficult experience that he had," Daya Khalsa said. "We would hope he could heal with that and continue to connect with his spirituality and if he chooses to do that as part of this community, he'd be welcome."
Kahlsa is no stranger to legal controversy. He's been involved in several civil suits in New Mexico, including a 2005 breach-of-contract suit in which he said he was banned from a blackjack seminar after being accused of working as an undercover security guard for casinos. He also once sued the Army for allegedly refusing to allow him to enlist with the long hair, beard and turban of the Sikh faith.
Khalsa said one of his other objectives in sending out a press release on the marriage broker case is to make progress in clearing his name. He said he had made previous applications with high-ranking law enforcement officials to review his case as part of that effort, but nothing has happened.
In the meantime, he said, he's eager to spread the word about his tribulations.
"I want to make people aware of just the really awful things," Khalsa said. "The Indian government sets itself up as being such a democratic type of government, but it's really not. Everything is just totally corrupt."

Tags:
News