Vancouver: A key witness in the Air India trial has testified that one of the chief accused told her that there would have been far more deaths following the Kanishka bombing had there not been problems with the plot to blow up the plane.

He had also told her that any evidence of his involvement in the bombing went down with the aircraft that crashed off the Irish coast killing all 329 passengers on board on June 23, 1985.

The woman who shared a relationship with Vancouver-based business Ripudaman Singh Malik, one of the chief accused in the Kanishka bombing, testified on November 4, that Malik had listed a series of problems which came in the way of his plans to destroy Air India planes in the campaign for a separate Sikh homeland.

"There would have been far more deaths. People would have known what we are all about. People would have known what we were fighting for (the Khalistan cause)," Malik had told the woman during one of their conversations.

She said Malik confessed his part in Canada's biggest mass murder in late March or April 1997 to her when she confronted him about a Punjabi newspaper article that implicated him without naming him, media reports said.

The woman, who is under police protection and cannot be identified and is the star prosecution witness at the trial of Malik, said when she pointed out to Malik that there were Sikhs aboard the flight, "he said there weren't any Sikhs."

PTI