 "Why Kanishka bombing continues to overshadow India-Canada ties")
The relationship between India and Canada continues to be strained.
The Indian Consulate General in Vancouver has announced that it will hold a memorial service on Sunday for the victims of the Kanishka bombing.
India stands at the forefront of countering the menace of terrorism and works closely with all nations to tackle this global threat. (1/3)
— India in Vancouver (@cgivancouver) June 18, 2024
This came on the same day that Canada’s Parliament observed a moment of silence to mark the one-year death anniversary of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
Nijjar, whom the Indian government designated a terrorist, was shot dead in June 2023 outside a Sikh gurdwara in Canada’s Surrey.
Ties between India and Canada came under strain after Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau accused agents of the Indian government of potentially being involved in the killing of Nijjar.
India responded by dismissed the accusations as “absurd” and “motivated” and expelled a senior Canadian diplomat in a tit-for-tat move to Ottawa’s expulsion of an Indian official over the case.
India in September advised all its nationals living in Canada and those contemplating travelling there to exercise “utmost caution” in view of growing anti-India activities and “politically-condoned” hate crimes as well as “criminal violence” in that country.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsIndia also announced that it was temporarily suspending issuance of visas to Canadian citizens in view of “security threats” faced by its high commission and consulates in Canada.
India in October renewed visa services for Canadians.
The Indian Consulate General said the memorial service will be held at 6.30 pm on Sunday at the Air India Memorial at Stanley Park’s Ceperley Playground area.
It urged the members of the Indian diaspora to join the event “in a show of solidarity against terrorism.”
But what do we know about the Kanishka bombing? Why does it continue to overshadow India-Canada ties?
Let’s take a closer look:
Kanishka bombing
Air India Flight 182, which carried 329 people, took off from Montreal on 23 June, 1985.
According to Outlook, the Boeing 747 was named ‘Kanishka’ after the ancient Indian emperor from the Kushan dynasty.
Most aboard were Canadians of Indian-origin. There were also two dozen Indians.
Though the flight’s ultimate destination was New Delhi, the plane was making a stopover at London’s Heathrow Airport.
Then, 45 minutes before it was slated to land at Heathrow, the plane exploded.
There were no survivors.
It was Canada’s worst air disaster and terrorist attack – and one of the biggest terror attacks in the world pre-9/11.
As per BBC, a bomb had been smuggled aboard the plane in a suitcase.
The suitcase belonged to a person called Manjit Singh, as per CBC News.
Singh was not on the flight when it took off.
Just 131 bodies were retrieved.
A second bomb exploded in Japan’s Tokyo airport that same day – leaving two baggage handlers dead.
The bomb was meant for the Air India Flight 301 to Thailand’s Bangkok.
The Canadian Encyclopaedia stated, “Japanese baggage handlers Hideharu Koda and Hideo Asano were unloading suitcases from a CP flight at Tokyo’s Narita Airport on 23 June 1985. As they grabbed one of the bags from Vancouver that was tagged for an Air India flight, it exploded. They were killed instantly."
Authorities in Canada said the Kanishka bombing was carried out by Sikh extremists as revenge for Operation Blue Star – which saw Indian forces storm the Golden Temple to flush out militants in 1984.
The suspects
Authorities in Canada soon arrested two men for the bombing – Talwinder Singh Parmar and Inderjit Singh Reyat.
Parmar headed up Babbar Khalsa – an extremist group that has since been banned in both countries. Reyat, meanwhile, was an electrician.
Reyat had purchased the dynamite, batteries and detonators used to construct the bombs.
Both men were charged with conspiracy, possessing weapons and explosives.
However, Parmar was later released after investigators could not make a strong case against him.
Interestingly, India under then prime minister Indira Gandhi had attempted to get Parmar extradited in the 1980s.
However, the Canadian government led by Pierre Trudeau – the father of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – blocked the request.
Parmar was ultimately killed in India in an encounter with Punjab Police in 1992.
As per BBC, Reyat was sentenced to 10 years in jail in the UK for the Japan bombing.
Reyat, in 2003, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the Kanishka case.
Reyat, who admitted helping construct the bomb, but denied knowing its intended target, was given a five year sentence.
By then, police had arrested two other men in the case – Ripudaman Singh Mali and Ajaib Singh Bagri.
Mali was a wealthy Vancouver businessman, while Bagri was a mill worker from British Columbia.
Malik and Bagri were both acquitted in March 2005 after a 19-month trial.
Malik was acquitted of charges of financing the plot, while Bagri was acquitted of transporting the bomb to Vancouver airport.
This came after British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Ian Josephson ruled that the Crown’s case against the two was too weak for a conviction.
BBC at the time reported that the people in the courtroom were left stunned by the verdict.
The relatives of the victims broke down in court.
To this day, Reyat remains the only person convicted in the bombing.
In 2010 Reyat was convicted of lying while testifying in the mass murder trial of Malik and Bagri.
Prosecutors said the verdict in the trial of Malik and Bagri would have been different if Reyat had told the truth on the stand instead of protecting his alleged co-conspirators.
Judge Ian Josephson called him “an unmitigated liar.”
His nine-year perjury sentence was the longest ever handed down by a Canadian court.
Reyat in 2016 was released after serving two-thirds of his sentence.
His release at the time generated much outrage.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous that the parole board will let him out,” Andre Gerolymatos, a co-director of terrorism, risk and security studies at Canada’s Simon Fraser University, told CBC News at the time.
Reyat’s release, incidentally, came soon after Justin Trudeau took over as prime minister of Canada.
Why it continues to overshadow relations
The wounds of the Kanishka bombing have never really healed.
In fact, the bad feelings preceded the bombing because of the Pierre Trudeau government blocking Parmar’s extradition in 1982.
As per Business Today, journalist Terry Milewski wrote in his book ‘Blood for Blood’, “It was Pierre Trudeau’s government which refused the 1982 Indian request to extradite Talwinder Parmar to India for murder, on the quaint grounds that India was insufficiently deferential to the Queen. That is not a joke. Canadian diplomats had to tell their Indian counterparts that the extradition protocols between Commonwealth countries would not apply because India only recognised Her Majesty as Head of the Commonwealth, and not as Head of State. Case closed!”
Canadian investigators have also been accused of bungling the case.
In 2004, even as the trial against Bagri and Malik was wrapping up, a newspaper reported that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) bungled in the case at various stages.
Quoting from a 19-year-old secret CSIS documents, the Globe and Mail newspaper (which obtained these after legal action) revealed that the CSIS failed to keep track of Parmar.
The intelligence surveillance against Parmar was mounted even before the Air India bombing took place. The CSIS suspected that he was plotting to kill the then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
The surveillance was conducted to ascertain the associates, contacts, movements and activities of Parmar and obtain photos of Parmar and all those he was in contact with,’’ the secret documents say.
Parmar came under the intelligence scanner 39 times between 6 April, 1985, and 23 June, 1985 (the day of the Air India blasts).
The newspaper quotes the surveillance documents to show how Parmar slipped away while the agents were following him just before the Air India disaster. It also reveals how the agents were caught by Parmar’s neighbours who reported their activities to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. And how the agents assigned to keep an eye on Parmar were shifted to other targets just before the bombs were loaded on to the aircraft.
A few days before the Air India disaster, the agents spotted Parmar “leave his house with an unidentified woman, go to another home, go shopping, drive to a farmhouse outside Vancouver and head west along the Trans-Canada Highway.” The agents simply abandoned the chase after some time, the report says.
Surveillance documents also give accounts that played a prominent role in the on-going Air India trial, including the surveillance of a test blast of a homemade bomb on 4 June, 1985; an alleged meeting of conspirators on 18 June, 1985, at Parmar’s house and the arrival of Bagri outside Parmar’s house.
“Surprisingly, after Ajaib Singh Bagri’s arrival, the CSIS discontinued surveillance of Parmar’s house,’’ says the newspaper reports, quoting the secret documents.
The CSIS also bungled when it erased the tapes of Parmar’s phone calls before and after the Air India bombing.
The fallout of the case continues.
Parmar, to this day, remains a hero of pro-Khalistan extremists in Canada.
The banned group Sikhs For Justice has named its campaign centre after him.
While then Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper issued a heartfelt apology to the families of the victims in 2010, many argue not enough has been done.
The final report into the Air India tragedy that killed 329 people recommended ex-gratia payment to families of victims, mostly of Indian-origin, and blamed the Canadian government for its failure to prevent the country’s worst terror attack.
India has accused Canada of ‘going soft’ on Khalistani extremists for years.
It says the events of the case further “emboldened” Khalistani extremists who began “operating with impunity” from Canada.
In the last decade, links of Canada-based Khalistani extremists have emerged in more than half of the terror cases reported from Punjab, India says.
With inputs from agencies
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