San Francisco: A US court has ruled that Kulvir Singh Barapind, a Sikh militant accused of murdering 52 people and injuring 11 others during the Punjab insurgency, should be returned to India.

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals agreed on Wednesday (Mar 10, 2004) with a lower court's ruling that Kulvir Singh Barapind be extradited to India to face charges related to clashes between Government forces and Sikh separatists in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The United States District Court for the Eastern district of California ruled in 2001 that Barapind should be extradited to India for six murders and an attempted murder related to his Sikh separatist activities.

The San Francisco-based 9th court ruled that a person accused of killing a civilian bystander in the course of anti-Government activity cannot claim the benefit of the "political offence" exception under an extradition treaty.

"In nations where democratic institutions and the ballot box provide a peaceful means for evolutionary change, it is unacceptable to circumvent the system and to pursue political or other goals by unlawfully raining down violence on a society and its citizens," Judge Stephen Trott wrote for the panel.

Barapind was arrested and detained in Los Angeles in April 1993 on charges of having a false passport. He later sought asylum and withholding of deportation claiming that he would be politically persecuted on his return to India because of his participation in a Sikh student group advocating the creation of a Sikh homeland in the Punjab, India.

Barapind was a college student in Punjab and a Sikh activist accused of having been involved in a series of violent activities in 1991 and 1992. An Indian magistrate had issued warrants for his arrest in connection with 11 alleged incidents of murder, attempted murder and robbery.

One of the charges is that he was one of a group of men who invaded a residence shared by several Sikhs who had allegedly collaborated with the Government and shot dead the wife of one of them.

With regard to the Kaur murder, Trott rejected dicta in an earlier ninth circuit opinion suggesting that crimes against innocent persons could, at least in some cases, be classified as political offences if committed with a political objective.

The suggestion that tactics are "simply irrelevant" Trott insisted, was wrong.

"This overindulgent approach indiscriminately and unwisely delegates to the Timothy McVeighs, the John Wilkes Booths, and the Mohammed Attas of the world the final legal decision as to what conduct is cognisable under the "incidental to" test pursuant to treaties recognising the political offence exception," the judge wrote.