Ripudaman Singh Malik, who was exonerated in the 1985 Air India bombing case, was fatally shot on Thursday morning in Surrey, British Columbia, according to Canadian news sources.

According to witness testimonies provided by CBC News, Malik was shot three times in the neck. According to media sources, the local police confirmed that shots were fired at around 9.30 a.m. local time and that a man died from his wounds there. They claimed it seemed to be a deliberate shooting.

All 329 people on board were killed when Air India Flight 182, Emperor Kanishka, a Boeing 747, was blown up on June 23, 1985, as it was en route from Montreal to Delhi. The three major suspects in the case were Malik, Inderjeet Singh Reyat, and Ajaib Singh Bagri.

Reyat, who was called as a prosecution witness, claimed he did not recall the specifics of the scheme or the names of individuals involved, and Malik and Bagri were ultimately found not guilty of the 329 charges of first-degree murder against them.

Malik had written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the beginning of the year, just before the Punjab elections in February, thanking him for the actions taken for the welfare of the Sikhs. He had cautioned against a planned effort to discredit the Prime Minister by listing the several measures by the BJP, including the reopening of the 1984 riots cases.

Gary Bass, a retired RCMP deputy commissioner who oversaw the terrorism investigation after the 1985 Kanishka bombing, was quoted by the Vancouver Sun as saying, “I’m not privy to the ongoing investigations on Malik right now, but I can say that from years when I was that he was involved in a number of activities that might bring him into conflict with other people.” He claimed that Malik had a lot of enemies as a result of the bombing. Bass referred to the possibility that his claimed involvement in the Air India bombing would be one of the motives for his death as “too many conceivable motives.”

Indian Defense Analysts think that his death may not have been related to his alleged involvement in the Air India bombing but rather may have been brought on by his change of heart, which led him to praise Prime Minister Modi and promise to cooperate with the Indian government.

While speaking to Opindia, Defence analyst Gaurav Arya stated, “here is a certain sense of disappointment amongst Khalistanis that the ISI is not supporting them like it used to, earlier. That could be because of the paucity of funds and also FATF. Ripudaman Singh recently praised PM Modi. It is possible that the ISI saw this as an affront and eliminated him.”

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