Vancouver: The key witness in the Air India trail said that she was threatened by associates of main accused Ripudaman Singh Malik and lives in constant fear of being killed.

She received death threats at the shopping mall and public transit before entering a Canada's witness protection programme in 1998, she said in an emotional address to the court on November 5.

The woman, who shared a relationship with the Vancouver-based businessman Malik, is the star prosecution witness in bombing of the Air India flight 182 which went down off Irish coast on June 23, 1985 killing all 329 people on board.

She received phone calls, her sons bedroom window was pelted with eggs in mid nights. At the request of police the family moved five times to temporary quarters, living out of suitcases, before being relocated permanently, she said. Even then she was recognised in her new neighbourhood and had to move again.

The witness protection programme has not made her feel secure, she said "the protection programme is not easy".

"You lose everything. You have no background. You have no records. You lose touch with your friends and family. You are constantly watching you back," the Globe and Mail quoted her as saying to the court.

The 43-year-old woman, who is under police protection and cannot be identified, said she remains terrified of being killed.

"I do not want to end up like Tara Singh Hayer," she said.

Hayer was a Punjabi newspaper publisher in Surrey, who was expected to be an important witness at the Air-India case but was shot dead on Nov 18, 1998 at his home. No arrests have been made so far.

She told the court that in late 1997 she met with a Canadian Intelligence service agent after she was accused of being a spy.

On the advice of a friend, she met with a CSIS agent and demanded to know where the rumours were coming from. He said he didn't know, but he began to meet with her regularly. When asked about Air India, the woman refused to talk about it at the time, even though Malik had revealed to her details of the plot.

The relationship between her and Malik had fallen apart by that time. He'd fired her from her job at a Sikh school. She had launched a lawsuit against him and the other trustees. But she remained loyal to Malik to a certain degree, CBC News reported.

She described one night where she and her young son sat by the fireplace and burned pages from her journal, pages that were records of the conversations she and Malik had about Air India. Then the threats began, she said.

PTI