Sikh militant Inderjit Singh Reyat, who was convicted for his role in the bombing of an Air India flight off the Irish coast in 1985, has been released from prison in Canada.
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Passengers aboard Flight 182 had boarded from Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal before heading to New Delhi on June 23, 1985.
Reyat was released from custody Wednesday to an undisclosed community after serving two-thirds of his nine-year sentence for perjury.
Mr Reyat was working as a mechanic in westernmost Canada and had purchased the dynamite, batteries and detonators used to construct the bombs.
Reyat was convicted in 1991 of two counts of manslaughter in the 1985 deaths of two baggage handlers when a bomb went off at Tokyo’s Narita airport on the same day that another suitcase bomb exploded on the Air India flight over the Atlantic Ocean.
The investigation and trial of the case which lasted 20 years and cost the Canadian government almost 130 million Canadian Dollars finally ended with a 10-year sentence for the bomb-maker but the conspirators walked free. I mean, he knows who those people are.
The conditions imposed upon Reyat will require him to avoid any contact with victim families, or certain individuals with involvement in political activities.
“It’s not only me”, he said, recounting the lives lost of 86 children under the age of 12 and the 29 families that were “completely wiped out”.
October 27, 2000: Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik are arrested and charged in the bombing of Flights 301 and 182.
Prosecutors have said the verdict in the trial of Malik and Bagri would have been different if Reyat had told the truth on the stand when called to testify about the plot, while Judge Ian Josephson called him “an unmitigated liar”.
Under terms of release by Parole Board of Canada, Reyat will be regularly monitored after his release.
2010- 2011: He is convicted of perjury and sentenced to a further nine years in prison – a record term for the offence.
He must also obtain counseling to address violent tendencies, a lack of empathy and “cognitive distortions” or what one official described as his exaggerated beliefs.
The parole board ruling for Reyat’s release said a psychologist’s assessment in 2013 found the man’s risk was “relatively high” for future group-based violence and that he lacked remorse for the victims of the bombings.
A parole officer could also recommend that Reyat be released early from the halfway house.
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The authorities at Canada and India have deduced the bombing was planned by a Sikh extremist outfit named Babbar Khalsa.
