Air India bomber walks out free on $500,000 bail

VANCOUVER: Convicted Air India bomber Inderjit Singh Reyat walked out a free man on Thursday after 20 years in jail.

He was released from the North Fraser facility here after the local British Columbia court of appeal Wednesday reportedly set a hefty $500,000 bail for his release.

Since his friends and family could not arrange the huge bail amount Wednesday, Reyat spent another day in the pretrial jail.
His wife Satnam Reyat, brother Avtar Singh Reyat and children went to the jail to receive him on his release.

Earlier, angry scenes were witnessed at the court when the media besieged the family members who came to submit formalities for bail.

A father of four, Reyat will now stay in his family home in Surrey under unspecified strict bail conditions as he faces a perjury trial for lying 27 times during his testimony at the Air India trial of Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri in 2003. That trial beginning in January could get him another 14 years in jail for perjury.

Indian-born Reyat, 55, who grew up in England and came to Canada in the 1970s, was jailed in Feb 2003 for pleading guilty to manslaughter in the Air India bombing that killed 329 people June 23, 1985.

Before this five-year term, he served 10 years in jail for making the bomb that killed two baggage handlers at Tokyo's Narita airport the same day.

Being a mechanic, Reyat was roped in by Air India plot mastermind and Babbar Khalsa founder Talwinder Singh Parmar to make the bombs to target Air India to avenge the 1984 Indian Army action at the Golden Temple to flush out Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale-led terrorists.