Families decry payments to accused's kin
'Terrible, just terrible'

Chris Wattie
National Post

Wednesday, July 03, 2002

Relatives of the victims of Air-India Flight 182 say they were shocked to learn that relatives of two of the men accused of the bombing were paid thousands from public funds to work on their defence teams.

"That's terrible, just terrible," said Bal Gupta, a Toronto engineer who lost his wife, Ramwati, in the 1985 bombing of the Air-India jet, the worst mass murder in Canadian history.

"That really tells me something about our justice system.... It's gone straight to the dogs."

All 329 people aboard the Air-India flight, most of them Canadian, were killed when a bomb went off over the Irish coast on June 23, 1985.

More than 15 years later, three British Columbia men were charged with eight counts, including murder, conspiracy and attempted murder, in the bombing and a related explosion the same day at Tokyo's Narita Airport.

Dr. Gupta said it was infuriating to learn that taxpayers are paying at least $12,000 a month to the relatives of one of the men accused of the killings.

The National Post reported yesterday that Jaswinder Singh Parma was awarded an untendered contract for computer services. He is the son-in-law of accused bomber Ajaib Singh Bagri and the son of Talwinder Singh Parmar, the deceased man who is the chief suspect in the bombing.

Mr. Parmar has already been paid more than $200,000 to build software, create a database of information and scan in the many documents in the complex case.

Last month, the Post reported that two adult children of Mr. Bagri's co-accused, Inderjit Singh Reyat, were employed in the law office of the defence team then headed by Vancouver lawyer David Martin.

Mr. Reyat's 26-year-old son Didar and one of his daughters were paid for clerical work.

The Post has also learned that the third accused in the case, businessman Ripudman Singh Malik, allegedly demanded that his son Jaspreet, a young lawyer, be included on his team. His lead lawyer, David Crossin, reportedly refused to endorse the arrangement, and it was dropped.

The news angered Parkash Bhardwaj, a retired technologist from Markham, Ont., who had just returned yesterday from a memorial service in Ireland for victims of the bombing.

He lost his 18-year-old son, Harish Bhardwaj, in the tragedy.

"It makes me very angry," he said. "This is just unbelievable to me: that we would pay these people's family.... I don't know what is going on there."

Dr. Gupta called the arrangements for the accused men's relatives "unbelievable."

"Paying the defence lawyers I can understand, but this?" he said from his Etobicoke, Ont., home. "It's terrible. I can't believe it."

He said the revelations about the payments to the defendants' relatives adds urgency to his long-standing call for a public inquiry into the Air-India case.

Mr. Bhardwaj said the victims' families are growing increasingly frustrated with the slow progress of the case and said many are losing faith in the justice system.

"I don't know what they are thinking," he said. "To hear that these people are being paid; it's very frustrating to learn this."

Ralph Steinberg, president of the Criminal Lawyers' Association, said he was not familiar with the Air-India case or the arrangements for the defence teams.

However, he said he had never heard of relatives of an accused being hired to help with the defence.

"It's not unusual at all for the defence to hire people to assist in case preparation ... especially in complex cases," Mr. Steinberg said. "But I would say that it's highly unusual for relatives to be hired. That's the first time in my experience I've ever heard of that."

Eight of the 10 lawyers on the Reyat team, including two associates in Mr. Martin's firm, abruptly withdrew from the case in April, at least in part over the arrangement with Mr. Reyat's relatives

Three of the lawyers have subsequently filed a formal complaint against him with the Law Society of British Columbia.

Federal tax dollars are underwriting the three men's defence, with Ottawa picking up an undisclosed percentage. At its height, Mr. Reyat's former legal team was billing an estimated $240,000 a month.

Kevin Sorenson, the solicitor-general critic for the Canadian Alliance, said the payments to the relatives raise troubling questions about the handling of the case.

"It seems odd that public funds are being given to a relative of the accused. It certainly throws up some red flags," he said. "There should be a review of this whole thing to see if it's on the up-and-up."

The trial has been delayed until next April.

National Post - Families decry payments to accused's kin

"That really tells me something about our justice system.... It's gone straight to the dogs."

Thanks Christopher for an interesting article. The above quote is an understatement!

Barbara