Parents of son missing since Sunrise Propane explosion beg Canada to let them visit explosion site

Eureka! Call to CFP from India this morning. Visas issued by Canada Immigration! The Canadian government should allow the wife and son of Rajinder Singh Saini to accompany him to Canada to help investigate the fate of their son, Parminder missing since the Toronto Sunrise Propane explosion. Canadian authorities approved a visa for Rajinder to come to Canada, but refused visas for his wife and son. “We do not want my father to have to travel to Canada alone in his emotional state without our moral support. “It’s been 15 long days already and we cannot sleep at night. It is not a laptop that I lost, it is my brother and my parents’ son that is lost.” He is tired, he is worried and he is heartbroken,” Parminder’s 33-year-old brother Bikramjit told Canada Free Press (CFP) in a telephone interview from Bathinda (Punjab) India last night.

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Bikramjit was on his way to the Canadian Consulate to urge officials to help get the visas about the same time that The Globe and Mail was reporting online that Citizenship and Immigration Canada spokeswoman Madona Mokbel said her department expects a “positive outcome” to the family’s request “within 24 hours.” Little information followed original reports of the “missing employee” after the August 10 Sunrise Propane explosion in northwest Toronto. “It is torture for my mother and father and to them the 15 days is a whole lifetime,” Bikramjit said. The results of the coroner’s investigation into the body found in the rubble after the explosion were never released and won’t be until an investigation by the office of the Ontario Fire Marshal is completed. Police have taken samples of clothing as well as a comb and a toothbrush from Parminder’s room in Brampton for DNA testing. Parminder’s parents cling to the belief that their son may have fled the scene fearing police. In touch with his brother by telephone hours before the explosion, the Saini family believes Parminder may be alive because his cellphone ran continuously in the hours after the blast. “They think that had he been killed, then why would his cellphone still work hours after”, said Bikramjit. “What else do they have to go on when even now Canadian officials are not saying that the body they are testing for DNA is that of Parminder’s?” “We want to come to Canada to help with the investigation, to offer our DNA.” Bikramjit says his family appreciates Liberal Mississauga-Brampton South MP Navdeep Singh Bains “the only person who has tried to help”, adding that most of the 35 emails and 10 faxes sent to Canadian government officials had no responses. “We are not asking for anything but the visas necessary to travel,” said Bikramjit. “We are not criminals. My mother retired from government. My father still works for the government and I attend an Army school.” Parminder Saini, 24, was working the night shift at Sunrise Propane during the early morning hours of Aug. 10 when an explosion, felt blocks away, tore through the site. The explosion was intense enough to necessitate the evacuation of some 10,000 residents. Trained as a mechanical engineer in India, Parminder came to Canada on Dec. 26, 2007 and was studying at Sheridan College in Brampton. “I am going through an extremely hard period. I am depressed,” Mr. Saini wrote in an email to Canada Free Press. “I have written to your prime minister, foreign affairs minister and others. I feel that they do not understand our pain. “They must know that I am an old person, that I need my wife and son with me at this terrible time. “In spite of all that they have turned me down. We are shocked with their decision. How can they take this so lightly? To us it is inhumane behaviour.” “My parents are determined to walk on the land of the last place where Parminder walked and won’t rest until they do,” Bikramjit said.