Inderjit Singh Reyat in July 2008.DARRYL DYCK
Jurors listening to recorded testimony of a key witness at the Air India trial heard contradictory evidence from the man charged with perjury.
Inderjit Singh Reyat sat in a B.C. Supreme Court prisoner's box Friday as he read a transcript of testimony he'd given on Sept. 11, 2003.
Back then, he spent three days on the stand at the bombing trial of Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik, who were later acquitted of mass murder and conspiracy charges.
Mr. Reyat, who was convicted of supplying bomb components in two June 23, 1985 Air India bombings that killed 331 people, was charged with perjury in 2006.
The indictment against him says he lied 19 times during the Air India trial about everything from not knowing that a man who asked him to collect bomb parts was involved in a Sikh terrorist group to how the explosive device would be used.
Lawyer Len Doust represents the Crown at Mr. Reyat's perjury trial and also cross-examined Mr. Reyat at the Air India trial.
On Friday, the jury of nine women and three men heard a recording of Doust questioning Mr. Reyat about why he gathered bomb parts such as dynamite, batteries, blasting caps and clocks used as timers to detonate explosives.
Mr. Reyat said Talwinder Singh Parmar, a leader with the banned group Babbar Khalsa, asked him to make an explosive device but that he'd already told the Crown as part of a plea agreement that he didn't make or arm any bombs.
"I think it's pretty clear what you made," Mr. Doust is heard saying in the recording. "Let's call it the thing that you made."
Mr. Reyat testified that he made at least one explosive and tested it in the woods outside his Duncan, B.C., home but that Mr. Parmar wasn't happy with the results.
Mr. Reyat also said he bought dynamite from several sources but only to blow up stumps outside his home.
In his affidavit seven months before he testified, Mr. Reyat said Mr. Parmar told him the explosive devices would be taken to India to blow up "property such as a car, a bridge or something heavy."
"I complied with Mr. Parmar's request because I was very upset with the Indian government's treatment of the Sikh people and I wanted to assist their cause in any way that I could," he said in the affidavit.
But during the Air India trial, Mr. Reyat couldn't say how a bomb could assist anybody's cause.
The Crown has maintained British Columbia-based Sikhs hatched a plot to bomb government-owned Air India planes after the army stormed the Golden Temple, Sikhism's holiest shrine.
He testified that a man who'd come to Duncan, B.C., with Mr. Parmar and was later dubbed Mr. X stayed at his house for about a week but that he never knew his name or anything about his family.
During his first day on the stand, on Sept. 10, 2003, the court heard Mr. Reyat bought three Micronta clocks and gave one to Mr. X, apparently to help him make an explosive device.
However, the following day, Mr. Reyat told Doust he gave two Micronta clocks to Mr. X and seemed to flip-flop on whether the man asked for them or whether he offered them to him.
Mr. Doust also questioned Mr. Reyat on why he bought two 12-volt batteries on June 22, 1985, the day two bomb-laden suitcases were loaded onto two different planes at Vancouver's airport.
Mr. Reyat testified he bought one battery for his trailer and another for his testing equipment to check circuits.
Mr. Doust has told the jury that Mr. Reyat's perjury trial is "unusual" because no witnesses will be called.
Air India Flight 182 blew up over the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 people on board, about an hour after two baggage handlers died at Tokyo's Narita airport when a bomb-laden suitcase exploded before it was loaded onto another Air India plane.
Mr. Reyat was sentenced to a controversial five-year sentence for his role in the Air India Flight 182 bombing.