Vancouver, March 30
Ripudman Singh Malik, a main accused in the Air India bombing case, who was acquitted after a lengthy trial, has admitted donating money to militant group Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) before the 1985 downing of the airline’s Kanishka flight that left 329 people dead.“BKI was not considered a terrorist group back in 1985,” Malik said in an affidavit read out at the B.C. Supreme Court on Tuesday.
“I have no recollection of having made the $ 100 contribution, but I assume it would have been in the nature of a charitable donation,” Malik said in the affidavit in a reference to a BKI membership form that bears his signature.
Malik, a businessman, is fighting an order of Financial Institutions Commission to remove him as a director of the Khalsa Credit Union on the grounds of terrorist links and misleading information he supplied to a Supreme Court hearing on his application to get legal aid in the Air India case.
His lawyer Murray Smith alleged at the hearing that the Commission was biased against Malik and trying to prove his guilt in the Air India terrorism case despite the fact he was cleared of all charges a year ago, “Vancouver Sun” reported.
But lawyer Ravi Hira, who was representing the government regulator, said Malik’s bias claim was ridiculous and that the Commission was just doing its job by probing his suitability after a number of serious issues were raised about him.
While Justice Ian Bruce Josephson acquitted Malik in the terrorism case, he accepted that late Talwinder Singh Parmar — the Babbar Khalsa founder — was the plot’s mastermind.
— PTI
