Two admit killing Sikh in Canada who was cleared of bombing plane

Two men have pleaded guilty to the contract killing of a Sikh man who was acquitted of the 1985 bombing of an Air India flight from Montreal to Mumbai.

- Leyland Cecco

According to an agreed statement of facts released by a British Columbia court on Monday, Tanner Fox and Jose Lopez confessed to shooting Ripudaman Singh Malik in 2022. But the pair remained silent over who had hired and paid them for the murder.

Malik was a prime suspect in the attack on Air India flight 182, which exploded off the coast of Ireland, killing 329 people. But he and another man, Ajaib Singh Bagri, were acquitted after a judge determined that two key prosecution witnesses were unreliable.

He was shot dead in 2022 outside the clothing import business he owned in Surrey, British Columbia.

According to the statement of facts, Fox and Lopez fired seven shots at Malik's red Tesla.

"The shots struck Mr Malik from his left side, and he was killed while he was sitting in the driver's seat," the statement read. Police later recovered the two handguns used in the murder, alongside a mask and gloves.