More could have died in Kanishka bombing: Witness

A key witness in the Air India trial has testified that one of the chief accused told her that there would have been far more deaths following the Kanishka bombing had there not been problems with the plot to blow up the plane.

He had also told her that any evidence of his involvement in the bombing went down with the aircraft that crashed off the Irish coast killing all 329 passengers on board on June 23, 1985.

Complete coverage of the Kanishka bombing

The woman who shared a relationship with Vancouver-based business Ripudaman Singh Malik, one of the chief accused in the Kanishka bombing, testified on Tuesday that Malik had listed a series of problems which came in the way of his plans to destroy Air India planes in the campaign for a separate Sikh homeland.

"There would have been far more deaths. People would have known what we are all about. People would have known what we were fighting for (the Khalistan cause)," Malik had told the woman during one of their conversations.

She said Malik confessed his part in Canada's biggest mass murder in late March or April 1997 to her when she confronted him about a Punjabi newspaper article that implicated him without naming him, media reports said.

The woman, who is under police protection and cannot be identified and is the star prosecution witness at the trial of Malik, said when she pointed out to Malik that there were Sikhs aboard the flight, 'he said there weren't any Sikhs'.

The 43-year-old woman said Malik also assured her that any evidence linking him to the bombings went down with the airplane. When she asked him if he could me in trouble, he said, "There is nothing to worry about. If there is anything about me it's down in the ocean," she quoted him as saying, 'CBC News' reported.

The woman also testified that several people were involved in the Kanishka bombing plot, took suitcases filled with bombs to the Vancouver airport, but one of them Hardial Singh Johal even tried to warn passengers not to board the plane.

Johal was picked up twice in the investigation but was never charged with any offence. He died last year.

She testified that Malik was the financier of the project, paying for the airplane tickets.

On being asked by Canadian prosecutor Joe Bellows about Malik's role in a group of Sikhs involved in making the bombs, buying tickets for the flights and then checking the suitcases onto the planes, the woman, who worked in a Sikh school between 1992 and 1997 said, "Everyone had their own task to do and Malik was mostly overseeing them."

She said Malik had told her that Johal did a lot of running around and was part of the group that delivered the suitcases.

The woman's testimony marks for the first time in the 18-year-old international terrorism case that the inner circle allegedly involved in the scheme have been publicly identified, The Globe and Mail daily said.

Speaking in a crisp, accented voice, the woman testified that Malik told her that he booked two airline tickets in Vancouver, arranged for someone to pick them up and provided money to pay for them.          

"Malik oversaw everyone else involved in the scheme, which he referred to as the Project," she told the British Columbia Court hearing the Air India case.

Malik also told the woman that the tickets, booked in Vancouver ticket office, connected to Air India flights in Toronto and Tokyo. She said he told her he originally tried to get the tickets through Montreal but switched to Toronto.

The woman said Malik had a hint of sadness in his voice as he talked about the bombing plot, but he also grinned and ended the conversation by warning her against repeating what he told her to anyone.

He had said, "I just want to you to remember that I can't always protect you," Canadian TV news network said.

Malik also told his confidante in 1997 that he was at his Kamloops home before the bombing with three other people who were studying a drawing of the Boeing 747 that would be bombed, she testified.

The woman said Ajaib Singh Bagri, a Kamloops mill worker and co-accused in the Kanishka bombing case, was among the group of four people who took suitcases with bombs to the airport.

She said Malik sent a man named Daljit Singh Sandhu to the airport to pick up the ticket. Sandhu did not have enough money and changed the return tickets to one-way, she testified.

Others in the group included a man called Balwant Singh Bhandher who drove the suitcases to the airport in a brown van. Neither Sandhu nor Bhandher have ever been arrested in the Air India case.

Malik had also told her that a man called Surjan Singh Gill worked very hard as part of the inner circle but backed out at the last minute, deciding he did not want to be part of it.

Inderjit Singh Reyat, the only person to have been convicted of murder so far in the Air India case, was also part of the group but had lots of other problems, she testified. She added that Malik had told her that Reyat was not very intelligent and had sent someone else to help him.

On the day of the bombings in 1985, Johal, Bagri, Sandhu, Bhandher and a man named Manmahon Singh went to the house of Talwinder Singh Parmar and waited at his house for confirmation that the planes had taken off, The Globe and Mail added.