File picture of Ripudaman Singh Malik, centre, leaving the Supreme Court in Vancouver, in 2005, after he was found not guilty of the 1985 Air India flight 182 bombing. Malik was shot dead by a hitman in 2022
| Photo Credit: AP
A hitman convicted in Canada of murdering an acquitted suspect in the 1985 Air India bombings that killed 331 people was sentenced on Tuesday (January 28, 2025) to life in prison.
Tanner Fox and his accomplice Jose Lopez pleaded guilty in October 2024 to the second-degree murder of Ripudaman Singh Malik.
While they confessed that they were paid to carry out the July 2022 shooting in a suburb of Vancouver in western Canada, they have not revealed who hired them. Lopez is due back in court on February 6.
Malik, along with his co-accused Ajaib Singh Bagri, had been acquitted two decades ago of charges related to the 1985 bombing due to a lack of evidence.
Deadliest air attack
The bombing of Air India Flight 182 off the coast of Ireland that killed all 329 passengers and crew had been the deadliest act of airborne terrorism prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
The Montreal-New Delhi Air India ‘Kanishka’ Flight 182 exploded 45 minutes before it was to have landed at London’s Heathrow Airport on June 23, 1985
A salvaged section of Air India’s Kanishka which crashed off the coast of Ireland on June 25, 1985.
It came as another bomb exploded at Japan’s Narita airport, killing two workers who were loading baggage onto an Air India flight.
Both suitcase bombs were later traced back to Vancouver, home to a large Sikh immigrant population.
Inderjit Singh Reyat is the only person to have been convicted in the plot, for making the bombs and for lying at the trials of Malik and Bagri.
The attacks took place during an Indian crackdown on Sikhs fighting for an independent homeland, and those behind it were alleged to have been seeking revenge for the storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar by Indian troops.
Published – January 29, 2025 12:38 pm IST
