VANCOUVER, Nov 1: The star government witness in the Air India terrorism trial told the judge on Friday that she still loves the man she is testifying against.
Prosecutors say the woman will provide key testimony linking Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri to the 1985 bombings that killed 331 people.
They have told the court she will testify that she and Malik were in love, and that Malik confided his role in the bombings to her.
Two suitcase bombs that originated in this western Canadian city exploded on June 23, 1985.
The first bomb killed two baggage handlers at Japan’s Narita airport, as the bags were transferred to Air India Flight 301. The second bomb blew up Air India Flight 182 as the jet approached the coast of Ireland. All 329 people aboard died.
Government prosecutors say the bombers wanted to revenge the Indian government’s crackdown on extremist Sikhs and the Indian army attack in 1984 on the Golden Temple at Amritsar.
Malik, a wealthy Vancouver businessman, is accused of paying for and helping to organize the plane tickets used to plant the bombs.
Malik hired the woman to work from 1992 to 1997 at a Sikh school in the suburban community of Surrey near here, the witness testified on Friday.
A court order prohibits naming or otherwise identifying her. She has been under police protection since 1997.
But on Friday, after glancing at him and wiping her eyes as she took the stand, the woman said she still loves Malik and believes that by testifying she is betraying him.
She told the British Columbia Supreme Court that Malik hired her to manage an early childhood centre at the Khalsa School from 1992 to 1997. Malik was the president of the Satnam Education Society, which ran the school.
She said she quit a better-paying job to work at the school because the position let her “educate my community, the Sikh community, in the importance of early childhood learning”.
The witness also told the court that Malik supported the family of a man already convicted in the case while he was in jail.
Malik paid the wife of Inderjit Singh Reyat at least 780 dollars a month for his “services to Sikhism”, and provided Reyat’s wife and four children with an apartment at the religious school.
Reyat was originally charged along with Bagri and Malik, but he pleaded guilty last February to helping build the bomb on Air India Flight 182.—AFP