A Canadian court has sentenced a 24-year-old man to life after he pleaded guilty to the killing of a Sikh businessman, a suspect in the 1985 Air India bombing who was later acquitted, according to local media reports.
Inderjit Singh Reyat, the lone man convicted in the 1985 Air India Kanishka bombing that killed 329 people, mostly Indians, on Friday appealed against his perjury conviction in Canada's worst case of terrorism.
The only person ever convicted in the 1985 Kanishka bombing recently went on trial for perjury, after he was accused of lying to protect the alleged suspects who were later acquitted.Inderjit Singh Reyat is on trial before a Canadian Court in the province of British Columbia on 19 charges of perjury, and stands accused of lying under oath in the trial of Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri. Reyat served more than 15 years in prison for manslaughter.
Malik had signed an "interim funding agreement" with the provincial government in 2002 to fund his 11-lawyer defence team. In 2004, Malik and his co-accused Ajaib Singh Bagri were acquitted of the mass murder of 331 people, including 22 Indians, in two separate 1985 bombings targeting Air India planes.
Inderjit Singh Reyat, the only person convicted in the 1985 Air India bombing in which 329 passengers were killed, on Monday appeared before a court in Vancouver to face perjury charges.
Canada wants Kanishka trial costs repaid
The prosecution claims Reyat, who admitted a minor role in the bombing, was refusing to identify others in the plot.
Inderjit Singh Reyat, convicted bomb-maker in the 1985 Air India bombing case, has been charged with perjury arising from his testimony during the Kanishka trial.
Owing to security concerns, only the judge, lawyers and witnesses will travel to the location, where they will see the plane's reconstruction, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Vancouver.
Willy Laurie, a former agent of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, testified before Justice John Major on Monday that a close friend of accused Ajaib Singh Bagri, told him not to pass on her information to police as Bagri, a leader of the Babbar Khalsa terrorist group, would kill her and children.
A perjury conviction can lead to a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.
A witness said the main accused in the hijacking also called for deadly revenge against former prime minister Indira Gandhi.
Jurisdictional disputes between Canadian and US police hampered the initial investigation, a former FBI agent has told the British Columbia supreme court.
rediff.com spoke to Vijayendra Ghatge, whose sister Sangeeta, was killed in the Kanishka bombing.
The verdict in the June 1985 bombing of Air-India Flight 182 came on Thursday morning.
Ripudaman Singh Malik, 57, and Ajaib Singh Bagri, 55, are charged with planting bombs that exploded on June 23, 1985, aboard an Air-India plane on its way from Toronto to India via London. The mid-air explosion killed 329 people.
Main accused Ajaib Singh Bagri and co-accused Ripudaman Singh Malik will get one last chance to rebut evidence against them in what is considered the most expensive trial in Canadian history.
The prosecutors found major discrepancies in her evidence about Ajaib Singh Bagri -- one of the two accused.
The British Columbia Court of Appeal said the amount of material and the complexity of the case justified the month-long extension.
Opposition members of Parliament in Canada's House of Commons united on Tuesday to pass a motion calling for public inquiry.
Some witnesses burst into tears as Justice Ian Bruce Josephson ruled that Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik had not downed the plane.
"I had faith in god, but after the judgment I have lost the faith. I have lost the wish to live. Now I will be haunted by the knowledge that the killers of my family will be moving about freely."
The two accused are charged with planting bombs aboard an Air India plane that exploded on June 23, 1985, on its way from Toronto to India via London. The mid-air explosion killed 329 people.
Among other things, she told the court that she did not even know the meaning of 'insurgency', claiming that her English language skills were not very good.
The claim that the woman was scared of the accused has prompted the prosecution to apply to the court to get her declared 'hostile'.
Lawyers for one of the chief accused, Ripudaman Singh Malik, asked for more time for negotiations over how his legal fees were to be paid.
Malik was shot dead in Surrey, British Columbia on Thursday. Malik and co-accused Ajaib Singh Bagri were acquitted in 2005 of mass murder and conspiracy charges related to the two bombings in 1985 that killed 331 people, the CBC News said.
The Canadian police have arrested two persons and charged them with first-degree murder in the targeted shooting of Ripudaman Singh Malik, the Sikh man acquitted in the tragic 1985 Air India Kanishka terrorist bombing case that killed 331 people.
Reyat was convicted of perjury in 2010 for lying to the court in 2003 during the trial of Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, who were acquitted in the terrorist attack on Air India Flight 182 that killed all 329 people aboard.
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