VANCOUVER, March 02, 2004

Ajaib Singh Bagri, Air-India defendant told an FBI informant a few weeks after the disaster that Bagri confessed his involvement in Air India bombing outside a New Jersey gas station in the summer of 1985. The man, who had just expressed concern to Bagri that his New York group was getting blamed for the Air India bombing, told the court that Bagri smiled as he admitted his role.

"Why the f--- are they bothering you?" the man quoted Bagri as saying. "We did this." The man, whose identity is shielded by a court order, said he was startled at Bagri's revelation, which the man confided to his roommates later that night.

"At that time, I did not ask him anything because I was so stunned and shocked about this," said the Punjabi native who is in his mid-50s. The man had become an FBI informant a couple of months earlier, providing information about "hard-liners" within his own organization, the Dashmesh Regiment, who he feared would commit acts of violence and ruin the reputation of the Sikh separatist movement.

He thought for a couple of days before deciding to report Bagri's confession to his FBI contact Ron Parrish, he said.

"This was not a small thing --329 people have been killed in that bombing and the guy -- he admitted to me that 'We did this.' How can a Sikh or a religious guy kill so many innocent people?" the man said. "Second, it was very harmful [to] our goal for the Khalistan."

The man, who hails from Bagri's home village of Chak Kalan, said he continued to provide the FBI with details of conversations he had with Bagri over the years.

He said he asked Bagri at a 1987 convention in California about a split between Bagri's B.C. Babbar Khalsa and the same group in Ontario and that Bagri said he was afraid the Ontario leader, Tejinder Singh Kaloe, "will tell to police about the Air India bombing."

Later at a New York temple, Bagri refused to answer the man's questions about how to build a bomb, court was told. The man quoted Bagri as saying: "Only two of us know. If a third person knows, we can go in the jail."

The man said he accompanied Bagri to temples and meetings when Bagri came to New York every few months.

While the man said he committed himself to getting more information on the Air India bombing for the FBI, he never wanted to meet with Canadian authorities or be a witness.

My family was in Punjab at that time. It was my fear if I go to testify against these guys, against this guy, nothing would be left of my family," he said. Sounding like a character in a spy thriller, the man said that when he first called the FBI to offer information in late spring 1985, he only identified himself by a pseudonym -- "John," which he maintained through several conversations with two agents, including Parrish.

Then the apartment the man shared with four others was raided by the FBI looking for leads after the May 1985 arrest of several Sikhs in New Orleans who were plotting to kill a visiting Indian politician.

Worried about what might happen to him, the man asked one of the FBI agents if he knew who had been talking to "John." The agent was Parrish. "I am John," he told Parrish.

The man testified that he had not seen Bagri in years before the two reconnected in July, 1984, at a convention at Madison Square Gardens where Bagri called for the death of 50,000 Hindus.

Bagri agreed to come to the man's apartment to meet with 20 or 30 members of the man's Dashmesh Regiment. The man said Bagri took him aside at one point and said he had enough explosives to blow up a city block.

"Tell your guys don't go to jail for a small thing," the man quoted Bagri as saying.The man admitted the FBI helped him with some immigration problems.

Bagri's legal team has said repeatedly it intends to challenge the credibility of the witness, who is considered the most important Crown witness against Bagri.

The Crown mounted a preemptive strike by asking the man about several controversies in his own life, including the death of his brother after an altercation between the two.The man said he stabbed his older brother in the chest in self-defence. The eldest brother died and the man was convicted of murder, but won an appeal after serving two years.He said he was also wanted in another stabbing in the early 1970s, after which he left India. But he said he eventually returned, faced trial and was acquitted.

Crown prosecutor Richard Cairns also asked the man about a series of immigration frauds in which he participated. The man said he won political asylum on his second attempt in 1996.

The trial attracted its biggest crowd in months Monday.

Several victims' families were there, as was a group of Bagri's relatives from the same Punjabi village.

Also there was Bagri's son-in-law Jaswinder Singh Parmar, who is the son of suspected Air India mastermind Talwinder Singh Parmar.

Vancouver businessman Ripudaman Singh Malik,Mr. Bagri are charged with murder in the deaths of 329 people in two explosions on June 23, 1985, one on an Air-India flight and one that killed two people at Tokyo's Narita airport.