TORONTO — A Canadian contract killer already serving a life sentence for the targeted assassination of an acquitted Air India bombing suspect has been handed an additional 15-year prison sentence in connection with a separate fatal shooting in British Columbia.
Tanner Fox, 25, received the sentence after pleading guilty to manslaughter with a firearm in the killing of 41-year-old Chad Colivas at his home in Abbotsford, British Columbia, according to reports by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).
A Trail of Violent Crimes
The timeline of Fox's criminal trajectory reveals a spree of extreme violence spanning early 2022:
March 21, 2022: Officers responding to a call at an Abbotsford residence found Chad Colivas suffering from fatal gunshot wounds. He died at the scene shortly after.
July 14, 2022: Less than four months later, Fox executed Sikh businessman Ripudaman Singh Malik in broad daylight as Malik sat inside his Tesla at a business park in Surrey, British Columbia.
2023–2025: Fox was arrested alongside co-accused Laetitia Acera. In 2025, Fox was convicted of second-degree murder for Malik's death and sentenced to life imprisonment without eligibility for parole for 20 years. Acera received four years in prison for break-and-enter in connection with the Colivas case.
During his sentencing hearing for the Malik murder, Fox admitted to acting as a hitman, remarking to the court that he had been "young and dumb" when he accepted the contract killing. Canadian law enforcement authorities have not publicly revealed who hired Fox to carry out the assassination.
Links to Canada's Deadliest Terrorist Attack
The victim of Fox's July 2022 hit, Ripudaman Singh Malik, was a high-profile figure historically tied to the 1985 Air India Flight 182 "Kanishka" bombing—the deadliest mass murder in Canadian history.
On June 23, 1985, a bomb exploded aboard Air India Flight 182 off the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 people on board, including 268 Canadian citizens, 27 British nationals, and 22 Indian citizens. The terror attack was carried out by Canada-based Sikh extremists.
Malik and his co-accused, Ajaib Singh Bagri, were acquitted of mass murder charges in 2005 after a Canadian judge ruled that the prosecution's evidence was insufficient for a criminal conviction. To date, Inderjit Singh Reyat remains the sole individual convicted in connection with assembling the explosives used in the terror plot; Reyat was released in 2016 after serving two-thirds of his sentence.
With this latest 15-year sentence handed down for the manslaughter of Chad Colivas, Fox will serve the term concurrently alongside his existing life sentence.
