Toronto:
A former top leader of the banned Babbar Khalsa terrorist group's UK unit has been ordered to appear before an immigration panel in Canada to decide whether he should be allowed to stay in the country.
Gurmej Singh Gill arrived in Vancouver with his wife to visit relatives in late November and was supposed to be returning to his home in Birmingham, England on December 22.
But he was ordered to appear before an immigration and refugee board adjudicator due to his alleged link to the banned outfit, the Vancouver Sun reported yesterday.
Melissa Anderson, communications adviser in Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, said Gill's admissibility hearing is likely be held in late February or early March.
Ms Anderson said Mr Gill was referred for the hearing under Section 34 (1)(f) of the Canadian act which says a person is inadmissible to Canada if he or she is "a member of an organisation that, there are reasonable grounds to believe, engages, has engaged or will engage in acts of espionage, subversion or terrorism".
It is not the first time the former Babbar Khalsa leader has run into problems with Canadian immigration officials.
He was arrested at Vancouver airport in August 2001 when he arrived for his son's wedding and was sent back to England without attending the festivities.
Mr Gill earlier told The Vancouver Sun that he renounced his membership in the Babbar Khalsa International in 2001, after the group was banned in the UK.
But he also said that during the period he headed the British branch of the organisation.
"I had done nothing wrong. People who do believe in violence - I had nothing to do with them because British law doesn't allow these things," he said.
For years Mr Gill called himself Gurmej Singh Babbar and regularly visited Canada, where he once lived.
The Babbar Khalsa was put on the banned terrorist list in Canada in 2003, years after it had been linked to the June 23, 1985 Air India bombing that left 329 people dead.
Two men tied to the Babbar Khalsa were charged and later acquitted in the bombing, which remains Canada's deadliest ac of terror.
Suspected Air India bombing mastermind Talwinder Singh Parmar founded the Babbar Khalsa as a militant group to fight for Khalistan, the name given to the mythical Sikh nation members wanted carved out of India's Punjab.
Mr Parmar left Canada for India in 1988 and was later arrested by police and killed in custody in October 1992.