OTTAWA - The RCMP ruled out a man suspected of plotting terrorist acts in other countries as a suspect in the Air India bombing after interviewing him in 1992, a public inquiry has heard.
There has been speculation for years that Lal Singh, who had ties to the International Sikh Youth Federation, may have been one of the couriers who delivered two bomb-laden suitcases that killed more than 300 people.
But Insp. Jim Cunningham testified Tuesday that the Mounties never uncovered any hard evidence linking him to the 1985 downing of Air India Flight 182, or a second blast the same day at Narita airport in Japan.
The RCMP finally managed to speak to Singh seven years after the attacks, when he was arrested in India on terrorism charges unrelated to the bombings.
The Mounties suspected he may have been roughed up by Indian police during their initial interrogation. But Cunningham said he and an RCMP colleague took care to ensure their own interview was conducted in a way that would meet all the legal tests in Canada.
Nevertheless, they didn't have a totally free hand since Indian police insisted on being present for the questioning. That meant, for example, that the Mounties couldn't ask Singh directly whether he'd been tortured.
"That was a question that I felt would have been inappropriate,'' Cunningham told the inquiry headed by former Supreme Court justice John Major.
"He would remain in custody after I left. If he was in fact poorly treated beforehand, there was a possibility that he would have been afterwards.''
In the interview, a transcript of which was tabled Tuesday, Singh denied any role in the bombing and his interrogators apparently took him at his word.
They had come up with no independent proof to the contrary over the previous seven years. And a Vancouver airline agent who checked in the suspect baggage on the day of the blast couldn't identify Singh in a lineup.
"At the end of the interview, certainly we went out with no more information, no more feeling that we had sufficient evidence to prosecute Lal Singh than what we had when we went in,'' said Cunningham.
" I did not feel personally that he was involved.''
Jacques Shore, a lawyer for the families of the bombing victims, was less willing to absolve Singh and suggested the RCMP may have quit too soon in its investigation of him.
"There's something lacking here,'' said Shore. ''Common sense tells me that maybe we didn't do everything we needed to do.''
Lal Singh, who also went by the name Manjit Singh, fled to Canada in 1985 as a fugitive from the United States, where the FBI suspected him of involvement in a failed conspiracy to assassinate a visiting Indian cabinet minister in New Orleans.
He went into hiding after the Air India attack and lived underground for three years before slipping out of the country. His 1992 arrest in India led to a conviction for terrorist activities in the Punjab region, and he remains in prison there.
