Two cleared of Air India bombing

A Canadian judge today acquitted two Indian-born Sikhs of murder and other charges relating to the deaths of 331 people in bomb outrages on an Air India plane over the Atlantic and at Tokyo’s airport 20 years ago.

After a two-year trial, British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Ian Josephson said the prosecution’s key witnesses were not credible. The bombings represented the deadliest terrorist strike before the 9/11 attacks and were Canada’s worst case of mass murder.

Spectators in the courtroom in Vancouver, including dozens of victims’ relatives, gasped when the verdicts were read. Some started wailing.

The defendants – Ripudaman Singh Malik, 58, and Ajaib Singh Bagri, 55 – were immediately removed from the courtroom. They were acquitted of all eight charges against them, including first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

Air India Flight 182 from Montreal to London, originating in Vancouver, exploded and crashed off Ireland on June 23, 1985. All 329 people on board - mostly Canadians – were killed.

An hour earlier, a bomb in baggage intended for another Air India flight exploded in the Narita airport, killing two baggage handlers.

Canadian prosecutors claimed that the two explosions were the result of one conspiracy, an act of revenge by Sikh separatists for the 1984 raid by Indian forces on the Golden Temple at Amritsar, the holiest site in their religion.

With the exception of several confessions testified to by star witnesses, much of the case against the two men was circumstantial.

The star witness against Bagri, a former member of a New York Sikh militant group who was paid US 382,000 (£198,000) for his testimony, said that Bagri confessed to him at a New Jersey petrol station. Taking the witness stand on March 21, 2004, the man testified that Bagri said “We did this” as they discussed the bombing.

Similarly, a woman who said she and Malik were in love testified that the millionaire businessman confessed to her several times.

Both of the witnesses’ identities have been protected by the court.

Malik is a high-profile Vancouver millionaire and Bagri is a sawmill worker from Kamloops, British Columbia.