Ripudaman Singh Malik, acquitted in the Air India bombing, shot dead in Surrey


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The old man had a long list of enemies.

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July 14, 2022 • 4 minutes ago • 5 minutes reading • 18 comments Ripudaman Singh Malik (center) leaves BC Supreme Court in Vancouver, BC with his supporters after being found not guilty of attempted robbery 182 of Air India in 1985, Wednesday, March 16, 2005. Malikl will not recover $ 9.2 million in legal expenses. Malik had admitted in a BC Supreme Court case that it would be difficult for him to convince the government to cover his legal bills. Photo of RICHARD LAM / The Canadian Press

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A man acquitted in the 1985 Air India terrorism case was shot dead outside his Surrey business on Thursday morning.

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Ripudaman Singh Malik, a former supporter of the Khalistan Sikh separatist movement, was killed shortly before 9:30 a.m. at block 8200 128th Street.

Several police agencies are investigating the shooting death of Ripudaman Singh Malik at 8236 128th Street in Surrey, BC on Thursday morning, July 14, 2022. Malik, a well-known Surrey businessman, was acquitted in 2015 in the Air bombing India, which killed hundreds of people. 1985. (Photo by Jason Payne / PNG) Photo by Jason Payne / PNG

An employee working in the car wash near the shooting site said he heard gunshots and ran outside to find Malik unconscious in his car.

“There were three shots. Once in the neck, that’s it. And I just took it off. He was alive,” said the man, who did not want to be named for security concerns.

Police arrived in about 10 or 15 minutes, he said, and an ambulance took longer.

The man said he knew Malik as a car wash customer and because he had a business nearby.

In March 2005, Malik and his Babbar Khalsa partner, Ajaib Singh Bagri, were acquitted by a BC Supreme Court judge of murder and conspiracy charges in Canada’s deadliest terrorist attack.

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Accused Air India terrorists Ajaib Singh Bagri (left) and Ripudaman Singh Malik walk together through the prison exercise yard where they are detained on November 1, 2004 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Bagri and Malik are accused of killing 331 people in two separate attacks on Air India on June 23, 1985. Photo by Jeff Vinnick / Getty Images

Air India, then the country’s national airline, was bombed to retaliate against the Indian government for its attack on the golden temple of Amritsar a year before it left hundreds of Sikh pilgrims dead.

A door of an Air India jumbo plane floats off the Irish coast after a bomb exploded causing the plane to crash in 1985. The RCMP will charge two British Columbia men with murder. of more than 300 people in connection with the disaster, Vancouver. Reports of the province. (CP IMAGE FILE / ap) CANWEST

Malik and Bagri were allegedly part of a conspiracy by a small group of BC militants who placed bomb suitcases on two connecting flights from Vancouver Airport. The deadly bags were labeled for Air India flights heading in opposite directions.

One exploded aboard Air India Flight 182 off the coast of Ireland on June 23, 1985, killing all 329 on board, mostly Canadian citizens. The other exploded at Tokyo Narita Airport while moving. Two baggage handlers died.

Inderjit Reyat, a former Vancouver Island man, was convicted of manslaughter in both attacks.

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After Malik’s acquittal, he resumed his leadership roles at the Khalsa Credit Union and the Satnam Education Society, which manages several Khalsa schools. And he moved from Vancouver to South Surrey. He continued to run several companies, including Papillion Eastern Imports, the clothing company based in the building where Malik was killed Thursday.

Several police agencies are investigating the shooting death of Ripudaman Singh Malik at 8236 128th Street in Surrey, BC on Thursday morning, July 14, 2022. Malik, a well-known Surrey businessman, was acquitted in 2015 in the Air bombing India, which killed hundreds of people. in 1985. (Photo by Jason Payne / PNG) Photo by Jason Payne / PNG December 11, 2000 – Ripudaman Singh Malik serves something at the Khalsa school in this October 1995 archive image. Photo by Handout / Vancouver Sun.

Malik also traveled to India for the first time since his acquittal in 2019 after the government of India granted him a visa. Earlier this year, he wrote a letter to the controversial Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist, thanking him for the work he had done on behalf of the Sikhs.

“I am writing this to express my sincere gratitude from the deer for the unprecedented positive steps you have taken to repair the long-reading Sikh demands and grievances,” Malik wrote, according to the Hindustan Times.

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He cited the removal of blacklists as it once was and the reopening of criminal cases for murder suspects during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, as well as a statement that the riots were in fact genocide.

Some criticized Malik for offering his support to Modi.

The 75-year-old had a long list of enemies.

The Surrey RCMP did not disclose his name, but Postmedia confirmed it with several sources.

He was found “bullet wound patient,” Const said. Sarbjit K. Sangha said. “The man received first aid from the staff he attended to until the Health Emergency Services took care of him. The wounded man succumbed to his injuries at the scene. “

He said “it appears to be a targeted shooting. A suspicious vehicle was located at block 12200 of 82nd Avenue completely engulfed in fire.”

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“The investigation is in the early stages and police are still looking for the suspects and a second vehicle that could have been used as an escape vehicle.”

Several police agencies are investigating the shooting death of Ripudaman Singh Malik at 8236 128th Street in Surrey, BC on Thursday morning, July 14, 2022. Malik, a well-known Surrey businessman, was acquitted in 2015 in the Air bombing India, which killed hundreds of people. in 1985. In the photo is an unknown woman, with her identity protected, at the crime scene. (Photo by Jason Payne / PNG) Photo by Jason Payne / PNG

Former BC Prime Minister Ujjal Dosanjh first met Malik in the 1970s, when the local South Asian community in Vancouver was very small.

Malik had started his clothing store, Papillon, in Gastown. The two men and their wives socialized. Malik was not yet a supporter of the Khalistan Sikh separatist movement, Dosanjh said on Thursday.

Dosanjh did the legal work pro bono to help Malik establish his first two charities: the Satnam Trust and the Satnam Education Society.

“He was a gangster smoking hippie who had a ponytail and then became an extremist warrior. It’s hard to explain, “Dosanjh said.” Something happened to him. “

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Dosanjh believes it is possible that Malik’s recent support for the government of India he once insulted could be a motive for the assassination.

“Whenever someone is overwhelmed by violence, one is saddened,” Dosanjh said. “Mr. Malik apparently played with violence in his life and is likely to have persecuted him again. “

March 16, 2005. The trial judge for the Air India bombing ruled that Ripudaman Singh Malik (left) was not guilty of bombing Air India Flight 182. He is escorted by a court sheriff and an unidentified man to a car waiting for him. Photo of Gerry Kahrmann province staff [PNG Merlin Archive] Photo by Gerry Kahrmann / Province

Kash Heed, a former Vancouver police officer and former attorney general for British Columbia, said Malik’s murder had similarities to the recent gang killings, where a masked shooter escapes, escapes and then escapes. he finds a burning escape car.

“This has ear marks once paid against an individual. We know of several of these successes in the Lower Mainland related to gang violence,” he said.

And he said Malik’s recent support for the government of India could be the reason for the shooting.

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“This has been such a long event, I’m amazed it has survived so many years,” Heed said. “My belief that it is related to his political defense.”

Several people who testified against Malik in the Air India prosecutor’s office declined to comment on Thursday.

Malik lived in a seafront palatine house on Crescent Road in southern Surrey with his wife Raminder, who is the only one with the title to the land.

Valued at $ 6.8 million, the house also appears as the home of some of Malik’s adult children in corporate records related to family businesses.

When a Vancouver Sun reporter visited Malik’s family in India on the eve of the Air India trial, his older aunts said he was born in Lahore, now Pakistan, on February 5, 1947, just before of the partition of India. He was still a baby when his father Ranjit Singh moved the family to Ferozpur, Punjab, on the Indian side of the new border.

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The family bought a gas station and opened a pharmacy …

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