Two charged in murder of Ripudaman Singh Malik, Canadian Sikh acquitted in Air India bombing
- Tanner Fox, 21, and Jose Lopez, 23, were arrested over the apparently targeted shooting in the Vancouver area
- Malik was acquitted in 2005 of charges related to the 1985 attack, one of history’s deadliest bombings of a commercial airliner
Police found Malik with gunshot wounds before he died in Surrey, a city near Vancouver, British Columbia, on July 14.
Police said at the time that they had not established a motive for Malik’s killing nor found evidence to suggest whether the killing was connected to the airline attack, though the shooting appeared to be targeted.
The RCMP’s homicide investigation team said on Wednesday that they have charged 21-year-old Tanner Fox and 23-year-old Jose Lopez with the first-degree murder of Malik. The two men’s lawyers could not immediately be found to seek comment.
Malik and co-accused Ajaib Singh Bagri, a sawmill worker in British Columbia, were acquitted in 2005 of charges related to the attack on Air India Flight 182, which exploded over the Atlantic Ocean in 1985 in one of history’s deadliest bombings of a commercial airliner.
They were also acquitted of charges related to the killing of two baggage handlers who died when a suitcase bomb, alleged by police as designed to destroy another Air India plane over the Pacific Ocean, exploded in Japan’s Narita airport.