Search the Internet          Tips

UK lets Canada charge Kanishka bombing suspect

Ajit Jain
India Abroad Correspondent in Toronto

Canadian crown prosecutors are jubilant that British Home Secretary Jack Straw granted them permission on Monday to charge Inderjit Singh Reyat in the 1985 bombing of Air-India Flight 182.

After serving a 10-year prison term in the death of two Japanese baggage handlers at Tokyo's Narita airport on June 23, 1985, the same day as Air-India's jumbo jet Kanishka blew up off the Irish coast, Reyat was to be released from Abbotsford jail in British Columbia on Friday.

That won't happen now as crown prosecutors will indict him in a couple of days and he will appear before the supreme court of British Columbia before Friday, said Jeffrey Gaul, a spokesman of the province's attorney-general's office.

"It's a very important step that we have taken," he said in a telephone interview soon after Straw's permission was made public. "We now intend to charge Mr Reyat as a third accused person and we expect to do that in a coupe of days when his first appearance in the BC supreme court will take place," Gaul said.

He couldn't give details of the indictment, but Gaul emphasized that Reyat would not be charged for the Narita airport offence for which he has already served a ten-year prison term.

"We haven't issued anything in writing as yet," he said discussing the indictment. "That legal document charging Mr Reyat will be filed in the court soon. Till that's done we are not discussing that [details of the charge sheet] publicly," Gaul said.

In a 30-page ruling, Straw granted a request by the Canadian government to prosecute Reyat for the Kanishka bombing.

Reyat has dual citizenship, Canadian and British. He was extradited from England in 1989 on manslaughter charges in connection with the Narita airport tragedy. So Canadian authorities needed the British government's permission to charge him for any other offence, a permission that Straw has now given.

When asked whether Canadian prosecutors would oppose any appeal against the British government's decision if and when such an appeal is filed on behalf of Reyat, Gaul said, "We are not sure whether there will be any appeal made in England."

If any such appeal were filed, it would be for the British government to deal with it, he added. "If we have to participate, we will do so. Whether we will be involved in that overseas appeal, we won't speculate on that either. We have to focus on the trial here in BC that Mr Reyat is now a third accused."

Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri were arrested in October last year and charged with a number of criminal offences, including conspiracy to commit mass murder, for the Kanishka bombing.

The charge sheet against Malik and Bagri stated that they conspired with Talwinder Singh Parmar and Inderjit Singh Reyat to place explosives on four different flights that carried two bombs.

Parmar, leader of the Babbar Khalsa, escaped to India and died in Punjab. The exact circumstances of his death are not clear.

The trial of the three accused will begin in February next year, Gaul said. He would, however, not speculate as to how much time it would take before the trial ends.

The decision of the British home secretary to allow the Canadian authorities to charge Reyat in the case came as a surprise to most people, including those who have been closely involved with the Kanishka case from the beginning.

Vancouver-based lawyer David Martin, an expert in international extradition cases, anticipated before Straw's decision was made public that "it would be profoundly shocking" if Reyat was allowed to be charged in the bombing.

He reportedly said that it would be "completely contrary to international law and all the authorities on extradition law built up over the past 100 years".

The Kanishka Bombing: The progress of the case

Back to top

Tell us what you think of this report