Kanishka: Witness funded plot to kill Indira

A prosecution witness in the Air India Kanishka bombing trial said on Tuesday he donated money to a plot by Sikh militants to kill PM Indira Gandhi. The man, whose name is shielded by court order, is a witness against Ripudaman Singh Malik, one of the two Sikh militants charged with murder in the 1985 attack on the Air India airliner that killed 331 people.

The defence is attacking the man’s claim that he turned down Malik’s request that he carry a ‘‘time bomb’’ in a suitcase to Vancouver airport because he did not support the use of violence in the movement for an independent Sikh homeland. Under questioning by Malik’s attorney, the man said he gave C$300 to help kill Indira at a 1984 meeting of Sikhs in Vancouver who wanted revenge for Operation Blue Star in Amritsar.

‘‘It was Indira Gandhi who ordered the attack. She should be killed, not other people,’’ the man told the British Columbia Supreme Court in defending his motives. The Air India bombings are believed to have been in revenge for Operation Blue Star.

The man said he donated the money at the request of Talwinder Singh Parmar, a founder of the Sikh group Babbar Khalsa. Parmar, who has also been linked to the Air India bombings, was killed by police in India in 1992. —(Reuters)