Perjury trial of Air India bombing convict begins

Inderjit Singh Reyat, the only person convicted in the 1985 Air India bombing in which 329 passengers were killed, on Monday appeared before a court in Vancouver to face perjury charges.

Reyat, who was released last year after serving more than 15 years in jail, is facing charges of lying 27 times at the trial of suspects Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, who were acquitted of murder and conspiracy in 2005.

Then he had claimed that he could not remember details of the 1985 bomb plot or the name of one of the men involved, prompting Justice Ian Josephson to call him "an unmitigated liar".

If convicted, he faces a maximum of 14 years in jail. The Air India Kanishka flight 182 from Montreal to Delhi exploded mid-air near the Irish coast on June 23, 1985, killing all 329 people aboard.

The alleged mastermind of the attacks, Talwinder Singh Parmar, was killed by police in India in 1992.