Ujjal Dosanjh

Ujjal Dosanjh is a Canadian lawyer and politician. The Canadian Encyclopedia says he was born on 9 September 1947 in Dosanjh Kalan, Punjab, moved to England at 17 and left for Canada in 1968, settling in Vancouver, where he worked in a sawmill and took evening classes. He earned a degree in political science from Simon Fraser University and a law degree from the University of British Columbia, and set up a private law practice in Vancouver in 1979.

The 1985 attack: The Encyclopedia says he publicly denounced those who advocated violence for an independent Sikh homeland. Its account of the Air India case records that in February 1985 he was jumped and beaten with a reinforced steel bar, and that in April 1985 he wrote to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney warning that the government had to intervene before something more serious happened. The Encyclopedia says the attack almost killed him and needed 80 stitches in his head.

In office: He ran for the NDP in the 1979 and 1983 provincial elections without success and won a seat in the British Columbia legislature in 1991. In 1995 he entered cabinet as Minister of Government Services and was promoted to Attorney General the same year. When Tara Singh Hayer was shot dead in November 1998, The Canadian Encyclopedia's report called the Attorney General, Dosanjh, a Sikh and friend of Hayer who expressed personal grief. Elected NDP leader in 2000, he became Premier, succeeding Glen Clark; the Sikh Heritage Museum of Canada dates its entry to 24 February 2000 and counts him the 33rd Premier of British Columbia. On 27 October 2000, as Premier, he welcomed the arrests in the Air India case, saying people across Canada would "heave a sigh of relief". He lost the 2001 election and returned to law until 2004.

In Ottawa: In 2004 he ran as a star candidate for the Liberal Party and won a seat in Parliament, and served as Minister of Health under Paul Martin. He won Vancouver South in 2006 and was re-elected in 2008. He later testified at the Major Commission's inquiry into the Air India bombing.

Known for: Being beaten in 1985 after speaking against violence for a Sikh homeland, and rising to become Attorney General, Premier of British Columbia and a federal minister.