By IANS,
Vancouver : Releasing convicted Air India bomber Inderjit Singh Reyat on a $500,000 bail Thursday, the British Columbia court of appeal here has imposed as many as 14 conditions on him.
Till he is back in court for his perjury trial in January, 55-year-old Reyat will be virtually under house arrest in his Surrey home, with his wife and four children.
Laying down the stringent bail conditions, Judge Anne Rowles said Reyat will be allowed out only when he wants to see his bail supervisor, seek medical help and visit the gurdwara.
He is forbidden from possessing any weapons or explosives. Further, police can search his home any time with sniffer dogs.
Indian-born Reyat was jailed for five years in Feb 2003 on charges of manslaughter in the Air India bombing that killed 329 people June 23, 1985. Before this, he spent 10 years in jail for making the bomb that killed two baggage handlers at Tokyo’s Narita airport the same day the Air India Kanishka flight 182 was bombed.
That bomb was actually meant to blow up another Air India flight from Tokyo to Bombay. But it went off during the transfer, killing the two baggage handlers.
While in jail, Reyat appeared in 2003 as a prosecution witness at the trial of bombing suspects Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri – who were later acquitted.
But in an alleged bid to shield them, he lied as many as 27 times in the witness box, forcing the judge to call him “an unmitigated liar.”
For lying in the witness box, he now faces the perjury trial which could again put him behind bars for 14 more years.
The Air India bombing was plotted by Vancouver-based Babbar Khalsa terrorists to avenge the 1984 army action at the Golden Temple to flush out Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his men who were fighting for a Sikh homeland of Khalistan.