A hitman who was one of two people who shot and killed a man acquitted in the 1985 bombing of an Air India flight has been jailed for life in Canada without the possibility of parole for 20 years.
Tanner Fox, 24, was sentenced on Tuesday by a British Columbia Supreme Court judge.
Fox and Jose Lopez pleaded guilty in October to the second-degree murder of Sikh businessman Ripudaman Singh Malik in 2022. Lopez will be sentenced on Friday.
The sentencing came after an emotional morning, in which Malik’s relatives begged Fox to reveal who hired him to carry out the murder.
“We plead with you to reveal the names of the people who hired you,” said Malik’s daughter-in-law Sundeep Kaur Dhaliwal, according to reporters inside the New Westminster courtroom.
The two men entered their guilty pleas on the eve of their trial for first-degree murder.
Malik was shot several times in his car outside his family business in Surrey, in the Canadian province of British Columbia, on the morning of 14 July 2022. Police found a burnt-out vehicle nearby.
Prosecutor Matthew Stacey told the court that Fox and Lopez planned a “deliberate killing” of Malik.
“They were financially compensated for killing him,” he added.
The killing happened more than a decade after Malik was acquitted in the devastating double bomb attack – Canada’s deadliest terrorist attack in history.
On 23 June 1985, Air India flight 182 from Canada to India blew up off the Irish coast, killing all 329 people on board, most of them Canadian citizens visiting relatives in India.
About the same time, a second bomb exploded prematurely in Japan, killing two baggage handlers
The bombings – widely believed to have been carried out by Canadian-based Sikhs in retaliation for India’s deadly 1984 storming of the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine in the Sikh religion – remain Canada’s deadliest terror attack.
Following a two-year trial, Malik and his co-accused, Ajaib Singh Bagri, were both acquitted in 2005 of mass murder and conspiracy charges related to the two bombings, after a judge ruled that testimony against them was not credible.
According to the agreed statement of facts, Fox and Lopez were contracted to kill Malik, but the evidence did not establish who had hired them.
Malik’s family has urged them to co-operate with police to bring to justice whoever had directed the killing.
In her testimony to court on Tuesday, Malik’s daughter-in-law said the lack of answers has left the family afraid for their safety.
“This fear and anxiety comes from not knowing who hired you,” she told Fox. “Are we next?”
According to Fox’s lawyer, the 24-year-old was born in Thailand and was adopted at age three by parents in Abbotsford, British Columbia.
“It’s impossible to say where he went awry, went wrong in his youth that took him to this horrible offence,” lawyer Richard Fowler has said.
In court, Fox stood up to apologise for his actions.
“I’m sorry for all the pain and hurt that I’ve caused,” he said.