Militant admits killing 329 in Air India blast
Inderjit Singh Reyat, who has already served 10 years in a British prison for his role in a blast at Tokyo's Narita Airport that occurred an hour before Air India Flight 182 went down, entered the guilty plea when he appeared in a Vancouver court yesterday.
The Air India disaster triggered the largest ever rescue mission off the Irish coast. The Irish navy and emergency services recovered 133 bodies from the sea.
Originally charged with 329 counts of first-degree murder, Reyat pleaded guilty to the same amount of charges of manslaughter.
The Boeing 747 was blown up at 31,000 feet on a flight from Vancouver to New Delhi.
Reyat's plea raised speculation that he would testify against the other two suspects Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri in a trial expected to begin later this year.
The three have been awaiting trial for more than two years on murder and other charges in connection with the two bomb blasts on June 23, 1985.
Reyat, a Sikh with both British and Canadian citizenship, served 10 years for manslaughter for providing the bomb that exploded at the Tokyo airport, killing two baggage handlers.
Malik, a millionaire businessman from Vancouver, and Bagri, a Sikh cleric from Kamloops, British Columbia, were arrested in October 2000 on charges of conspiracy and first-degree murder connected with the airline bombing.
Canadian investigators believe both bombs came from British Columbia, which is home to about half of Canada's 200,000 Sikhs.
They suspect Sikh militants of planting the bombs in revenge for India's 1984 raid on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the seat of faith for India's Sikh minority.
The investigation of the bombings were the largest and most expensive undertaken by the Royal Canadian Police, with the total cost estimated to exceed 7.5 million.
During the investigation Canadian police visited Cork and they worked closely with gardaí.
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