New Delhi: Tanner Fox and Jose Lopez, the two men accused of killing Ripudaman Singh Malik—one of those acquitted in the 1985 Kanishka Air India flight bombing—in 2022 have pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in a Canadian court.
Media reports said the court heard an agreed statement that the two men had been paid to kill Malik, and shot him seven times while he was sitting in his car on 14 July, 2022 in Surrey, British Columbia. However it could not be established who gave the order.
Lopez’s lawyer, Gloria Ng, told Global News, “What we know from the agreed statement of facts is that there was some type of financial incentive that was involved in the commission of this crime, but in terms of any other specifics, it is another one of those situations where unfortunately it is just something that we as people on the outside will probably never know.”
She added: “One of the things we certainly have in the forefront of our minds is the youth of our client—Lopez is a very young man and we are certainly hopeful with prospects for rehabilitation.”
Fox and Lopez will be sentenced on 31 October.
In 2005, the Supreme Court of British Columbia had acquitted two of the accused, Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, of mass murder and conspiracy charges for two bombings that took place in 1985. The court found that the evidence did not directly connect the two to the bombings.
Air India Flight 182, which had 329 people on board, including 268 Canadian citizens and 24 Indians, had taken off from Toronto on 23 June, 1985 and was en route to London, from where it was supposed to go on to Delhi and Mumbai. A suitcase bomb exploded when the plane was around 31,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean.
Meanwhile, another bomb exploded in Tokyo’s Narita airport the same day, killing two people. It was meant to be planted in Air India Flight 301 to Bangkok, before it continued to Delhi.
Malik’s family want punishment for those who ordered hit
In a statement, Malik’s family said that nothing would erase the pain it had gone through “losing a family member in this way”, though they were grateful that the shooters were being brought to justice.
They called the deceased man a “father, brother, husband and grandfather as well as a tireless community leader”.
“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,” the statement added.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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