VANCOUVER - The jury in the perjury trial for a key witness in the Air India case was dismissed Monday before the trial even began after the judge became concerned about bias because of a comment made by one juror.

Inderjit Singh Reyat, who testified in 2003 at the trial of two men who were eventually acquitted in the Air India bombing, was to begin his trial on Monday, but now a new jury must be chosen.

Selection has been scheduled for next Monday and the trial is expected to begin later this month.

Reyat sat quietly in a Vancouver courtroom on Monday wearing a dark suit and navy turban as the judge and lawyers for the Crown and defence discussed comments that one of the other jurors brought to the court's attention.

While the comments themselves weren't disclosed, it was enough for Judge Mark McEwan to bring in the jurors and tell them they were dismissed.

"Over the weekend the court was made aware of a concern of remarks that may have been made in the jury pool during the selection process in this matter," McEwan told the 12 jury members.

"I won't go any further than to say that, having heard from counsel, (I) have come to the conclusion that there is no effective way to get to the bottom of any inquiry of whether the remarks were made, whether any other jurors were tainted by those remarks, or whether there's a credibility issue with the juror that made that complaint."

McEwan thanked the jurors for their time before they quietly filed out of the courtroom.

Dismissing an entire jury before a trial even gets underway is extremely rare, said Crown prosecutor Len Doust, adding he couldn't recall a similar case in British Columbia.

It's the latest twist in a story that began when Air India Flight 182 was bombed out of the sky off Ireland in June 1985, killing 329 passengers and crew members. Two baggage handlers died in a separate explosion at a Tokyo airport.

Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri were acquitted of all charges in March 2005 after one of Canada's most expensive trials.

Reyat was charged with perjury in 2006, and an indictment filed by prosecutors alleges he lied 27 times during his testimony in September 2003.

Most of the allegations in the indictment, which haven't been proven in court, relate to his insistence that he did not know or remember key details of the bombing plot or know the name of one of the men involved.

Reyat's trial has been delayed several times already.

The Crown's theory during that trial was that Sikh extremists in British Columbia, angered by the Indian government's June 1984 attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Sikhism's holiest shrine, plotted to bring down Air India planes.

The alleged mastermind behind the attacks, Talwinder Singh Parmar, was killed by police in India in 1992.

One of the victims' family members was in the courtroom on Monday to watch the latest case tied to the tragedy.

Perviz Madon's husband Sam was on the Air India flight.

"I feel responsible, I feel I owe this to my husband," Madon told reporters outside the courthouse. "It's always hard."

Perjury carries a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison, although maximum sentences are rarely imposed.