I was misunderstood, says Air India trial witness
Friday, November 7 2003 11:57 Hrs (IST)
Vancouver: The key witness in Air India bombing case has said the Crown prosecutor has
misunderstood many of the things she told him in pre-trial interviews.
The prosecutor, Joe Bellows, got information wrong, including his false impression that she wrote about
two confessions made by prime accused Ripudaman Singh Malik
regarding his involvement in the Air India bombing case, she told the court.
Court earlier heard the woman wrote in her diary about her various conversations with Vancouver-based
businessman Malik, with whom she had a relationship. She has also
testified that Malik confessed to her twice.
But on November 6, she said, "I have never written about Air India" in the diary.
"Mr. Bellows, most of the time you didn't get it right," said the woman, who can't be named under court
order. "He mispronounced Sikh names and mixed up Sikh institutions,
she said.
"I tell you five years worth of things and when you take those things, you blend them together. I tell you
things here and there, and most of the time you do not understand,"
The 'Globe and Mail' quoted her as saying in the court.
The woman 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.
The woman, who is in a Canadian witness protection programme for her own safety, said she resents
that she has not seen her elder son for five years but Bellows.
She also resents that she has to tell him things that she does not want to talk about, she said.
She said she does not like prosecutor Bellows, who has questioned her extensively since 1999 and
prepared her for testimony in court.
Malik and another Ajaib Singh Bagri, have been charged with murdering the 329 people killed in the Air
India crash and two people killed in a bomb explosion.
PTI
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