The Canadian police have mentioned they’re nonetheless working to find out the motive behind the focused killing of Ripudaman Singh Malik, a 75-year-old Sikh man acquitted within the tragic 1985 Air India Kanishka terrorist bombing case.
Malik was shot lifeless in Surrey, British Columbia on Thursday. Malik and co-accused Ajaib Singh Bagri have been acquitted in 2005 of mass homicide and conspiracy fees associated to the 2 bombings in 1985 that killed 331 individuals, the CBC News mentioned.
The report cited a witness who mentioned he “heard three shots and pulled Malik from his red Tesla bleeding from a neck wound.” Another witness from a close-by enterprise recognized that the sufferer of the capturing was Malik.
Surrey Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) mentioned a “man shot at that location at around 9:30 am succumbed to his injuries at the scene. They say it appears to be a targeted shooting and are not releasing the victim’s name.” The police mentioned they positioned a “suspect vehicle” which was “engulfed in fire,” the report added.
Another report in ABC News mentioned that whereas police had not initially launched the sufferer’s id, it confirmed it after Malik’s son, Jaspreet Malik, posted an announcement on social media about his father’s capturing.
“The media will always refer to him as someone charged with the Air India bombing,” Malik’s son wrote on Facebook, in response to ABC News. “The media and RCMP never seemed to accept the court’s decision and I pray today’s tragedy is not related.” In an announcement, the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team mentioned: “We are aware of Mr Malik’s background, though at this time we are still working to determine the motive. We can confirm that the shooting appears to be targeted and there is not believed to be any further risk to the public.” The 1985 Air India bombing is among the many worst terrorist assaults in Canadian historical past and within the historical past of the airline.
On June 23, 1985, the Air India flight 182, carrying 329 individuals, together with 268 Canadian residents and 24 Indian residents, flew from Toronto and had stopped in Montreal from the place it was en path to London after which onwards to its remaining vacation spot Bombay.
The airplane was flying 31,000 ft above the Atlantic Ocean when a suitcase bomb exploded within the entrance cargo, killing all on board.
Another bomb was meant to be planted in an Air India flight scheduled to take off from Japan nevertheless it exploded at Tokyo’s Narita airport killing two baggage handlers.
The CBC News report mentioned that response to Malik’s dying was combined. While Malik’s associates mentioned they “lost a hero of the Sikh community,” former British Columbia premier Ujjal Dosanjh, a former acquaintance of Malik’s, mentioned he was a controversial determine.
“One of the other complicating factors is he made a recent visit to India where he wrote a letter in support of [Prime Minister] Modi and his policies and I think that may have reverberated and had implications within the community,” Dosanjh mentioned within the report.
The CBC report added that in recent times, Malik had served as chairman with Khalsa School and managed two of the non-public colleges’ campuses in Surrey and Vancouver. He was additionally president of the Vancouver-based Khalsa Credit Union (KCU), which has greater than 16,000 members.
Inderjit Singh Reyat was convicted on varied fees and spent 30 years in jail for serving to to make the bombs, and for mendacity throughout trials, together with Malik’s. He was launched in 2016 after serving two-thirds of his perjury sentence.
Reyat was the one particular person convicted for the Kanishka bombing blamed on Khalistani extremists searching for revenge for the Indian military motion on the Golden Temple to flush out militants in 1984.
Source: www.financialexpress.com”