Reyat gets 9 years for perjury at Air India trial

A B.C. man has received a nine-year sentence for lying at the 2003 trial that acquitted two men in the Air India bombing.

Inderjit Singh Reyat's sentence was handed down Friday, more than 25 years after the deadly Air India attack that killed 331 people.

Reyat was convicted of perjury last fall.

He lied 19 times in the 2003 trial of Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, two men who were then charged with mass murder and conspiracy.

Because Reyat has been given credit for 17 months in pretrial custody, he will be in jail for another seven years and seven months.

Reyat previously served a five-year sentence in exchange for his testimony and an admission that he helped build the bomb that brought down the Air India plane.

He has also served a 10-year sentence for manslaughter in the related case of a bomb that went off at a Tokyo airport on the same day that the Air India plane exploded.

The bomb was meant for another Air India flight, but ended up killing two baggage handlers instead.

With files from The Canadian Press

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  RCMP Deputy Commissioner Gary Bass speaks to media outside B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver, B.C. on January 7, 2011. (Simon Hayter / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

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  Perviz Madon (centre), whose husband was killed in the Air India bombing, speaks to media outside B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver, B.C. on Friday January 7, 2011. (Simon Hayter / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

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  Inderjit Singh Reyat, the only man ever convicted in the Air India bombings of 1985, waits outside B.C. Supreme Court during a fire drill which forced everyone in the building outside prior to the start of the second day of his perjury trial in Vancouver, B.C., on Friday September 10, 2010. (Darryl Dyck / THE CANADIAN PRESS)