Ripudaman Singh Malik

Ripudaman Singh Malik was a Vancouver-area businessman and one of the two men tried over the 1985 bombing of Air India Flight 182. ThePrint reported in 2022 that he was born in Lahore, that his family moved to Ferozepur at Partition when he was about six months old, and that he went to Britain around 1970 and then to Canada. In Vancouver he ran a branch of the Khalsa Credit Union and served on the board of the Satnam Education Society and Khalsa Schools, a network of religious schools.

The trial: Malik was arrested on 27 October 2000 at a private school he had founded in Surrey, British Columbia. He was charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder over the deaths on Flight 182 and over the deaths of the two baggage handlers at Narita Airport. The trial opened on 28 April 2003 before Justice Ian Josephson of the British Columbia Supreme Court. The Crown's star witness against him was a former daycare supervisor at his school, who was later placed in witness protection after repeated threats. On 16 March 2005 Justice Josephson found Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri not guilty, saying the Crown's evidence had fallen "markedly short" of the required standard. The Canadian Encyclopedia says both men walked out of the courthouse within the hour, and Maclean's says Malik, then 58, was freed after more than four years in jail.

His killing: On 14 July 2022 Malik, then 75, was shot dead outside his clothing business in Surrey. Tanner Fox and Jose Lopez, first charged with first-degree murder, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in New Westminster on 21 October 2024. On 28 January 2025 Justice Terence Schultes sentenced Fox to life in prison with no parole for 20 years. CBC reported that both men admitted being paid to kill Malik, and that neither the agreed statement of facts nor the court proceedings showed who ordered the killing. Malik's daughter-in-law, Sundeep Kaur Dhaliwal, asked Fox in court to name the people who hired him. His family told the Globe and Mail that the pleas brought "mixed emotions" and that the work remained incomplete until those behind the plot were brought to justice.

Key moments

• 27 October 2000: arrested in Surrey.
• 28 April 2003: trial opens.
• 16 March 2005: found not guilty on every charge.
• 14 July 2022: shot dead in Surrey.
• 21 October 2024: his two killers plead guilty. 28 January 2025: Fox is sentenced.

Remembered for: Malik is remembered as one of the two men whom a Canadian court acquitted of the Air India bombing, and for a killing whose organisers have never been named in court.