Author:
Publication: Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation
Date: November 4, 2003
URL: http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/11/03/airindia031103
The Crown's key witness at the Air
India trial gave astounding evidence when she resumed testifying on Monday.
She said Ripudaman Singh Malik confessed to the bombing of Air India Flight
182.
The woman, who cannot be identified,
testified on Friday that she's still in love with Malik who is charged
with murder, along with co-accused Ajaib Singh Bagri, in connection with
the Air India bombing which killed 329 people, and a bombing the same day
that killed two baggage handlers in Japan.
With shy smiles and some obvious
discomfort, the witness, who is in protective custody, described how she
and Malik fell in love in the early 1990s. He wrote her love notes, told
her how unhappy he was with his wife and confided his secrets to her.
Those secrets are the core of the
Crown's case.
One by one she listed the people
Malik knew and what he said about their connection to the 1985 bombing.
It began with Malik's wife who flew to London in 1992, to comfort the wife
of Inderjit Singh Reyat.
Reyat has pleaded guilty to purchasing
parts for the bomb that killed all 329 people on board the Air India jet.
Mrs. Malik was sent to tell Mrs. Reyat "they" wouldn't forget her.
The witness told the court Malik
supported Reyat because he was "a Sikh hero." The witness then talked about
a conversation she had with Malik in 1997. He told her he wanted to have
a confidential talk which she should remember and record because one day
she would need to use the information when it wasn't proper for them to
be together.
The witness then described a Vancouver-based
Sikh conspiracy. She spoke of a meeting in Seattle in 1985 just before
the bombing of Flight 182.
She says Malik told her that at
the gathering his spiritual adviser, Bha Jeewan Singh, gave his blessing
to crash an Air India plane.
She testified he confessed: "If
one child dies for Sikhism, so what? We had Air India crashed. Nobody,
I mean nobody, can do anything. It's all for Sikhism." When she heard him
say this, she said, "I just broke down. I cried."
Rama Dhardwaj, who lost her son
Harish in the bombing, said she was outraged that the alleged bombers would
hide behind their religion. "They are just angry people," she said, with
"no religious bone in their body."
With her head bowed, Malik's former
love interest went on to say how another of Malik's associates paid for
and picked up the tickets that put the suitcase bomb on the plane. And
another man gave his passport to several people to use when they came to
Canada.
Finally she testified that Malik
told her about the assassination of Indira Gandhi. He said that on the
same day the assassins of Indira Gandhi were executed they sent a message
telling Reyat to "keep up the good work."
Much of this was recorded in the
witness's red journal. She admits she destroyed many of the pages because
she was afraid, but also to protect Malik. In a voice wavering with emotion
she said she "did it so that I wouldn't be sitting here. I didn't want
people to look at him in a bad way."
The trial continues.
