On June 23 1985, hundreds of happy passengers boarded a flight in Canada destined for India.
The Air India 747 designated as Flight 182 left Toronto with a stop in Montreal for more passengers before heading across the Atlantic to London and then on to Delhi.
Hours later as the plane cruised at almost 10,000 metres above the ocean, the plane suddenly disappeared from radar screens. The aircraft was torn apart with pieces falling into the ocean off Ireland. All 329 passengers and crew members aboard were killed, 280 of them Canadians.
After a massive investigation involving retrieving debris from deep in the ocean, investigations concluded it was a bomb. Further investigation led to a secretive Sikh militant group based in British Columbia.
At the same time as Flight 182 disappeared, another bomb had exploded prematurely in the Narita Japan airport baggage area in a suitcase destined for another flight to India, That bomb killed two baggage handlers.
The bombings were soon connected to the same Sikh group. it was soon revealed that suspicions had been long focussed on the group, but that various police surveillance efforts were uncoordinated and full of mistakes.
A commission of inquiry into the bombing completed and released on 17 June 2010 concluded that a “cascading series of errors” by the government of Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) had allowed the terrorist attack to take place.
After lengthy efforts, three people were charged, although more were known to be invovled, including the alleged mastermind, Talwinder Singh Parmar.
Already sought by India in the murders of policeman, Canada had refused to extradite him. He later assembled the team that would result in the bombings and the worst mass murder in Canadian history.
As part of the bungled investigation, police had tracked him to the woods near Duncan, Vancouver Island, where he and Reyat exploded test bombs three weeks before the fatal bombings of Air India flight 182, and the Narita airport, but they did not connect the practice explosions with several previous warnings about a bombing plot of Air India planes which enabled the group to proceed with the attack.
Parmar was never put on trial for the massacre.
Seven years later in 1992 Indian police shot and killed him while he was attempting to buy Stinger ainti-aircraft missiles from Pakistani Taliban.
Other failings included police erasing critical taped surveillance evidence.
In 2003, Inderjit Singh Reyat plead guilty to a charge of manslaughter and construction of a bomb. He was sentenced to five years. At the time he was expected to testify as a Crown witness in the trial that year of Ripudiman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri. Malik and Bagri were acquitted on charges of conspiring to blow up Air India Flight 182 due to lack of evidence. In 2010, Reyat was sentenced to a further nine years for perjury in that trial.
In 2010, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered a formal apology for the “institutional failings” that led to the Air India bombing.
Today, thirty years later , many families of victims are angered that the mastermind of the bombings, Talwinder Singh Parmar, is honoured as a martyr at a Sikh temple in Burnaby, British Columbia.
2008 Documentary commissioned by CBC ( runs 90 minutes)
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