A Canadian court has sentenced 24-year-old Tanner Fox to life in prison, with no possibility of parole for 20 years, for his role in the 2022 killing of Sikh businessman Ripudaman Singh Malik. Malik had been acquitted in the 1985 Air India bombing case.
Fox and his co-accused, Jose Lopez, pleaded guilty in October to second-degree murder. Lopez’s sentencing is scheduled for Friday.
During an emotional hearing at the British Columbia Supreme Court on Tuesday, Malik’s family pleaded with Fox to disclose who had hired him for the killing. “We plead with you to reveal the names of the people who hired you,” urged Malik’s daughter-in-law, Sundeep Kaur Dhaliwal.
Fox and Lopez admitted to planning and executing the targeted shooting outside Malik’s family business in Surrey on July 14, 2022. A burnt-out vehicle was later found nearby. Prosecutor Matthew Stacey told the court that both men were financially compensated for the murder. However, the identity of those who hired them remains unknown.
Malik was acquitted in 2005, alongside co-accused Ajaib Singh Bagri, after a judge ruled the evidence against them in the Air India bombing case was not credible. The 1985 attack, in which Air India Flight 182 exploded off the Irish coast, remains Canada’s deadliest terrorist incident, killing 329 people, mostly Canadian citizens. A second bomb also exploded prematurely in Japan, killing two baggage handlers. The bombings were believed to be linked to retaliation for India’s 1984 military operation at the Golden Temple, Sikhism’s holiest site.
In court, Malik’s family expressed ongoing fear and uncertainty, with his daughter-in-law asking, “Are we next?” Fox, who was adopted from Thailand as a child and raised in British Columbia, apologized for his actions but did not reveal further details about the murder’s orchestrators.
