Two men have pleaded guilty to the contract killing of a Sikh man who was acquitted in the 1985 bombing of an Air India flight from Montreal to Mumbai.
According to an agreed statement of facts released by a British Columbia court on Monday, Tanner Fox and Jose Lopez confessed to shooting Ripudaman Singh Malik in 2022. But they remained silent over who hired and paid them for the murder.
Malik was a prime suspect in the attack on Air India flight 182, which exploded off the coast of Ireland, killing 329 people. But he and another man, Ajaib Singh Bagri, were acquitted after a judge determined that two key prosecution witnesses were unreliable.
He was shot dead in 2022 outside the clothing import business he owned in Surrey, British Columbia.
According to the statement of facts, Fox and Lopez fired seven shots at Malik’s red Tesla.
“The shots struck Mr Malik from his left side, and he was killed while he was sitting in the driver’s seat,” the statement read. Police later recovered the two handguns used in the murder, alongside a mask and gloves. They also found C$16,485 in cash.
The closely watched case came days after Canadian officials revealed a wide-ranging and violent campaign of intimidation of Sikhs across Canada orchestrated by India’s government.
Moments after Fox and Jose admitted to second-degree murder, the pair traded blows in a British Columbia courtroom.
Lopez sprinted over to Tanner and began punching his co-defendant, according to the Vancouver Sun. The pair hit each other as the public and Malik’s family watched. Both men were later handcuffed by sheriffs. Both are due back in court on 31 October for sentencing.
Two hundred and eighty Canadians died in the Air India attack, which remains the worst act of mass murder in the country’s history. The victims included 86 children. A second bomb targeting another plane killed two baggage handlers after it detonated at Tokyo’s Narita airport.
Crown prosecutors previously argued the bombing of Air India was masterminded by Sikh extremists in British Columbia as retaliation for the Indian army’s raid of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Sikhism’s holiest shrine, in 1984 that killed hundreds of Sikh pilgrims.
After Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri were acquitted in 2005, Malik unsuccessfully sued the government for C$9.2m, alleging the crown knew of deficiencies in its case but nonetheless pursued charges under pressure from the public.
Only one person was ever convicted for the bombing. Inderjit Singh Reyat served 30 years for lying during two trials, including Malik’s, and for helping to make the bombs in his Vancouver Island home. He was released in 2016.
Canadian authorities believe Talwinder Singh Parmar was the architect of the attack. He was shot and killed by Indian police in 1992.
After his trial, Malik, held leadership roles with a credit union and network of Khalsa schools.
He had been a vocal advocate for the separatist Khalistan movement, which aspires to an independent Sikh homeland in Punjab, but his beliefs appeared to shift after his name was removed from an Indian blacklist. In 2022 he visited India and praised Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s treatment of Sikhs – a move Indian media suggested “may have cost him his life.”
Malik’s killing came as he was locked in a legal battle with Hardeep Singh Nijjar over the use of a commercial printing press used for Sikh religious scripture. Nijjar was murdered a year later in a shooting Canadian officials believe was linked to the Indian government.
Last week, Canadian police made the explosive accusation that Indian diplomats had worked with a criminal network led by a notorious imprisoned gangster to target Sikh dissidents in the country through a string of arsons, extortion schemes, drive-by shootings and at least two murders. Earlier this year, police reached out to Malik’s son with a “duty to warn”, over fears there was a credible threat against his life.
In a statement following the guilty pleas, Malik’s family said the result brought “mixed emotions”.
“The weeks leading up to the scheduled trial has brought the trauma of our loss to the forefront. While we are grateful that the shooters are being brought to justice, we know that nothing will erase the pain that we have gone through losing a family member in this way,” the statement said.
“[The Royal Canadian Mounted police and prosecution service]’s hard work has resulted in some justice for our family. However, the work is not complete. Tanner Fox and Jose Lopez were hired to commit this murder. Until the parties responsible for hiring them and directing this assassination are brought to justice, the work remains incomplete.”
