OTTAWA: A man was shot dead in British Columbia on Thursday who local media reports said was Ripudaman Singh Malik, a Canadian Sikh businessman acquitted in connection with the 1985 Air India bombing that killed 329 people.

Police, in a statement res­ponding to a Reuters request for information on Malik’s death, said they found a man suf­f­ering from gunshot wou­nds when officers respo­nded to a reported shooting just before 9:30am (1630 GMT).

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s (RCMP) statement did not name the man but said he died on the scene in Surrey, British Columbia. An RCMP spokesperson said they could not name the victim and that the investigation was ongoing.

Local media, citing sou­rces and a witness, reported that the man was Malik.

The attack on Air India Flight 182, which exploded over the Atlantic Ocean in 1985, is one of history’s deadliest bombings of a commercial airliner.

Police have alleged it was plotted by Sikh extremists living in Canada as revenge on India for its storming of Sikhism’s Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984. The RCMP, in its statement on Thursday, said the killing appeared to be targeted and that they had found a suspect vehicle fully engulfed in fire.

Authorities were still looking for the suspects and a second vehicle that may have been used as getaway vehicle, the RCMP added.

Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, a sawmill worker in Kamloops, British Columbia, were charged in 2000 with bombing Flight 182. They were also charged with killing two baggage handlers who died when a suitcase bomb, alleged by police as designed to destroy another Air India jet over the Pacific Ocean, exploded in Japan’s Narita airport.

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2022