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Police tried to bribe me, says Kanishka accused

Satinder Bains in Chandigarh

A man accused in the bombing of Air-India's Kanishka jet in 1985 has alleged that the Canadian police tried to bribe him into giving false testimony to strengthen their case.

Lal Singh, who was the first to be named an accused in the case, alleged that Canadian police offered him $2 million and immigration to a country of his choice for giving a false statement.

Air-India Flight 182, which left Toronto on June 23, 1985, blew up en route to India and crashed off Cork in Ireland.

In a letter to journalists in Chandigarh from the Nabha high security jail 100km away, Singh alleged that the Canadian police lacked evidence and were ready to spend any amount to fabricate the prosecution story.

Born in Village Akalgarh of Punjab's Kapurthala district, Singh had left India for Greece in 1978, returned to India in 1981 and went to Canada the same year. Later he went to the US.

He said that when the Indian Army stormed the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest shrine of the Sikhs, in 1984, he was in the US. To his surprise, he claimed, he was booked in India in a case related to an attack on Bhajan Lal, then chief minister of Haryana. By the time he and Dalbir Singh, a co-accused in the Bhajan Lal case, returned to Canada, the Kanishka crash had occurred.

Lal Singh said he returned to India in 1992 and was arrested in Bombay. Besides Indian intelligence agencies, he claimed to have been interrogated by the Canadian police. He alleged that the police in Bombay registered a false case against him and he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Singh said that while he was serving time in Ahmedabad jail he was informed that he had been discharged from the Kanishka case. He alleged that it was in Ahmedabad jail that the Canadian police first tried to bribe him. He claimed that he was told to state before the court that he could identify all the accused nominated by the Canadian police, but he refused.

Singh alleged that in 1999 he was shifted from Ahmedabad to Jalandhar jail in Punjab. The Canadian police, he claimed, approached him again with their offer. Visits of Canadian police officers could be verified from the jail visitors' registers, he said.

Another prisoner, Iqbal Singh, who was involved in smuggling drugs from Pakistan, had accepted the Canadian police offer and appeared as a witness, he claimed.

Indo-Asian News Service

The Kanishka Bombing Case: The complete coverage

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