Indian citizen should be released before deportation, argues his lawyer

The RCMP questioned the man in the murder of a British Columbia newspaper publisher a decade ago, and he was ordered deportation in May 2000, and now his lawyer argued at an immigration hearing on Wednesday, that if the man is sent back to India then he would be in danger.

A deportation order for Rattu was issued in the year 2000 and since then, he was convicted on charges of fraud in Delta, B.C., and he also faced many other fraud charges.

Rattu was also questioned and subsequently cleared for the murder of the founder of Indo-Canadian Times, Tara Singh Hayer. Hayer, who was a member of the Sikh community agreed to be a witness in the trial of Air Indian bombing, before being shot to death on the 18th of November 1998.

Rattu’s lawyer, Rakesh Dewett said that nothing has been proven and that he has even been given a clean chit by the RCMP.

During argued during the hearing that before being deported back to India, his client should be allowed to be free. He noted that the permanent resident status of his client in the US has lapsed and he is now trying to reinstate his Indian passport.

But the argument by the Canada Border Services Agency is that Rattu is a flight risk. Meanwhile Rattu is also not willing to sign the travel documents that the Indian government needs for his arrival back to India.

Dewett said that if Rattu is sent back to India then his passport would be revoked and the passport of a person is revoked, he is no longer welcomed in the country, and neither can he go anywhere else.

Dewett said that in the countries of Third World, if one doesn’t have any status, anything can be done to him or her, adding that they can even put him in a central jail where he is not locatable.

Dewett said that his client is in serious danger because he married a Muslim woman and in India, there are many powerful people who think of him to be a “person of interest”.

The Canada Border Services Agency is simply trying to speed up the departure of Rattu, but is left frustrated at this moment.

The spokeswoman of the agency Lisa White said that they have pursued all angles that they possibly can, and that they are doing everything to make sure that the person is removed.