VANCOUVER (Diya TV) — A British Columbia court sentenced 22-year-old Tanner Fox to life in prison with no chance of parole for 20 years for murdering Ripudaman Singh Malik, a man once a suspect in the 1985 Air India bombing. Fox and his accomplice, Jose Lopez, 38, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in October 2024.
The 75-year-old Malik was shot dead on July 14, 2022, in the parking lot of a business complex in Surrey, British Columbia. He and his co-accused Ajaib Singh Bagri were acquitted in 2005 in the British Columbia Supreme Court of charges connected with the 1985 Air India bombings, which killed 331 people. The two attacks were against two Air India planes; one bomb exploded over the Atlantic Ocean near Ireland killing all 329 on board while another detonated at Narita Airport in Japan, killing two. At the sentencing, it was testified in court that Fox and Lopez were paid and contracted to assassinate Malik. It did not disclose who ordered the hit or what was the motive.
Air India bombings have long been linked to Sikh Khalistani separatists operating in Canada. Inderjit Singh Reyat, the convicted bomb maker, was convicted of manslaughter with respect to the bombing.
The sentencing of Fox and Lopez brings some closure to a case that has lingered in the public eye due to its connections to one of Canada’s most tragic terrorist incidents. Authorities continue to investigate the broader implications of Malik’s murder and its potential links to ongoing tensions within the Sikh community in Canada.
