Canada on Wednesday released Inderjit Singh Reyat, the only person convicted for the deadly 1985 Air India bombings that took place in the aftermath of the Sikh pogrom in India. The incident was considered one of the deadliest airline tragedies in history, killing 331 people, AFP reported.

In the near-simultaneous attacks, the accused had placed two bombs in suitcases and got them on board two flights leaving Vancouver. The bomb on Air India flight 182 exploded near Ireland, killing all 329 people on board. The other one went off at the airport in Japanese city Narita, killing two baggage handlers. Reyat, who was an immigrant in Canada at the time, bought the equipment and constructed the bombs.

Reyat first served 15 years in jail for making the bombs. In 2010, he was convicted by a Canada court for lying to cover up for his co-accused Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, who were acquitted for lack of evidence. The court gave Reyat a perjury sentence of nine years, but has now released him on parole. He will live in a halfway house under strict regulations until August 2018.

The bombings were believed to be reactions to Operation Blue Star in 1984, in which the Indian army had moved to flush out Sikh militants from the Golden Temple in Amritsar, and targeted many others in Punjab on the then prime minister Indira Gandhi’s orders. Gandhi at the time had seen the Sikh groups’ actions as secessionist, though they had claimed that they wanted to establish their religious rights in the country. The fallout from the operation included Gandhi’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguards and later the widespread persecution of Sikhs around the country.