Latest news with #Sukhwinder
Time of India
2 days ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Tussle over family-run gurdwara: Bros turn foes
Ludhiana: BJP leader Sukhwinder Singh Bindra and his brother, Simranpal, were Monday booked for allegedly threatening their cousin, Navpreet, at gunpoint over a dispute regarding the presidency of the management committee of a gurdwara located in Model Town. Sukhwinder is also a member of the National Institute of Social Defense (NISD). The FIR was lodged on the complaint of Navneet's mother, Surjeet Kaur Bindra. She alleged that the rift between them is over the control of the Shaheed Baba Deep Singh Gurdwara, which was set up by her late husband, Rajinder Singh Bindra. She said that after her husband's death, his brother Surinder Pal Bindra and Surinder's sons, Sukhwinder and Simranpal, started threatening her son to surrender any claim to the gurdwara's management. She further alleged that on March 3, Sukhwinder came to the gurdwara with his security team, manhandled Navpreet, and threatened to shoot him if he did not step aside and allow Sukhwinder's father to become the head of the gurdwara committee. ASI Pardeep Kumar, who is investigating the case, said the accused have been charged with BNS sections 351 (2) (criminal intimidation), 3 (5) (criminal act done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) and sections 25 and 27 of the Arms Act. Investigation is under way.
Time of India
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Mumbaikars groove to Sukhwinder Singh's hits
Sukhwinder Singh captivated fans at Shanmukhananda Auditorium with a high-energy performance of his Bollywood hits. Dressed in a custom white suit, he had the audience dancing and singing along to favorites like 'Chaiyya Chaiyya' and 'Jai Ho. Sunday evening was special for Sukhwinder Singh fans as the Bollywood singer performed his chartbusters to a packed Shanmukhananda Auditorium. The powerhouse performer, dressed a custom white suit, soon had the audience of all ages, dance and sing to his hits. Right from the moment he stepped on stage, the crowd erupted with loud cheers and the singer's infectious enthusiasm caught on. He belted out one hit after another including Dard-E-Disco, Chaiyya Chaiyya, Ramta Jogi, Marjaani, Dil Haara, Jai Ho, Dhan Te Nan and others, proving why he remains one of the favourite performers in the country. Sunday evening was more like a celebration of music than just another plain concert as women were called on stage to dance to Gallan Goodiyaan while the rest of the audience surged forward and turned the aisles too, into a dance floor. The vibe and energy at the auditorium was pulsating with the beats of his hits. Songs like Banthan Chali Bolo, Haule Haule, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, Slow Motion Angreza, had the crowd completely involved in, echoing the unmistakable spirit of Mumbai's undying love for music. The singer said, 'I consider myself extremely lucky that I have got the opportunity to constantly perform for the last four years on this prestigious auditorium. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like A genetic disorder that is damaging his organs. Help my son Donate For Health Donate Now Undo Aap sab ka main thahe dil se sukhraguzaar hoon, aapke paayar ke liye main hamesh aapke aage natmastak rahunga. Aap logon ka pyaar, aapka sahyog aur aapke best wishes mere liye sabse bada aashirwaad hai. Jai Ho!' Sukhwinder's set list: Dard-E-Disco Chaiyya Chaiyya Banthan Chali Bolo Haule Haule Ramta Jogi Udi Udi Jaye Layi Vi Na Gayee Marjaani Dil Haara Nasha Hi Nasha Hai Jai Ho Dhan Te Nan Gallan Goodiyaan Jhoom Barabar Jhoom Woh Kisna Hai Ajj Mera Jee Karda Slow Motion Angreza Gash Kha Ke Lucky Kabootar
Toronto Sun
18-06-2025
- General
- Toronto Sun
Canada's worst terrorist attack: Air India families still feel anguish and frustration 40 years later
On June 23, 1985, Air India Flight 182 was ripped out of the sky by a Canadian-made bomb. Most of the 329 people killed were Canadians. Forty years after their shattering loss, their families feel forgotten and ignored. Flowers placed at a site where an event honouring the memory of those who lost their lives on June 23, 1985 in Canada's worst terrorist attack. Photo by Nick Procaylo / PNG Majar Sidhu recalls how excited his sister, Sukhwinder, was to travel to India in June 1985 so her 10-year-old daughter, Parminder, and son, Kuldip, age nine, could meet their paternal grandparents. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account The young widow, who lived with her brother and family in South Vancouver, decided at the last minute to change their tickets to an earlier Air India flight out of Toronto. Another relative took Sukhwinder and the kids to Vancouver Airport on June 22, 1985, as Sidhu had to work. They stopped at the nearby Sikh gurdwara on Ross Street to pray for a safe trip. And then they were on their way. Irish sailors unload bodies on June 29, 1985, at a navy base in Cork, after Air India Flight 182 crashed off the coast of Ireland on June 23. Photo by ANDRE DURAND / AFP via Getty Images Little Kuldip, born after his dad was killed in a car crash near Williams Lake, wanted to be a police officer. Grainy snapshots with white edges show him playing dress-up and carrying a toy gun. His big sister was 'very sweet,' Sidhu said. Just like her mother. Renée Saklikar was also at the Vancouver airport that day, with her mother, father and sister. They were seeing off her beloved aunt and uncle, Zeb and Umar Jethwa, both brilliant surgeons in Gujarat who had made their first trip to Canada. The Jethwas had left their young son, Irfan, at home in India and were eager to get back to him after a lovely visit to the Lower Mainland. A treasured photo taken at the airport shows both of them smiling back at the Saklikars as they headed to the boarding area. In Toronto, Jayashree Thampi was unable to leave on Air India Flight 182 with her husband, Kanaka Lakshmanan, and seven-year-old daughter, Preethi, as she didn't have enough vacation time at her bank job. She planned to join them a couple of weeks later. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Air India pilot Narendra Hanse's widow Sheila and son Anil Hanse. Photo by GLENN BAGLO / VANCOUVER SUN I actually met all the crew. Anil Hanse Lakshmanan, an engineer, had moved to Canada in 1976 with his wife. Canadian-born Preethi loved music and Indian classical dance. Then strangers, Anil Hanse and Sanjay Lazar almost joined relatives on their ill-fated journeys 40 years ago this month. Hanse, then 23, had landed a job as a deep-sea diver in the North Sea, but had been home visiting his parents in Mumbai. His dad, Narendra Singh Hanse, a veteran Air India pilot, suggested his son take advantage of the free family flights to accompany him on a short trip to Canada before returning on Flight 182 to London. The younger Hanse did fly with his dad on the first leg of the Toronto-bound flight — from Mumbai to Delhi. Then he decided he should head to Scotland from Delhi so he could go to work. 'I actually met all the crew. I sat in the cockpit there with Captain (Satwinder) Bhinder and Dad,' Anil Hanse said in a recent interview. 'I sat on the bus with all the cabin crew, with the cockpit crew, and then spent a day with Dad at the hotel in Delhi.' As they parted, they agreed to talk the following Sunday — June 23. For Lazar, then just 17, it was his bad final exam marks that kept him from travelling from India to Canada with his father, Sampath Lazar, his pregnant stepmother, Sylvia, and his three-year-old sister, Sandeeta. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. After he failed his finals, everyone agreed he should stay home to deal with the fallout and his parents — longtime Air India employees — would carry on with their toddler. His father was keen to visit cousins in Toronto for the first time in 25 years. A drifting piece of wreckage, carrying the Air India logo, is seen floating in the water near Cork, Ireland, on June 24, 1985, following the Air India Boeing 747 crash off the Irish coast a day earlier, killing all 329 people on board. Photo by CAULKIN AND REDMAN / ASSOCIATED PRESS Air India 182, good morning. Capt. Satwinder Bhinder Sampath Lazar was the flight supervisor on Flight 182 when it left Toronto for London's Heathrow Airport at 9:02 p.m. on June 22 — an hour and 20 minutes late. After a brief stop in Montreal to pick up more passengers, there were 329 people aboard the Boeing 747 dubbed 'Kanishka.' Most of the passengers — 268 of the 329 — were Canadian citizens. Also on board: A B.C.-made suitcase bomb that had been checked in at Vancouver airport and tagged for Air India flight 182 despite the purported passengers not having confirmed tickets. Less than an hour before the flight was scheduled to land at Heathrow, Shannon Air Traffic Control radioed the cockpit. It was 7:08 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time on June 23, 1985. Bhinder responded to Irish controller Michael Quinn. 'Air India 182, good morning,' the captain said cheerfully, his voice recorded on a scratchy tape that would be played 19 years later in a B.C. courtroom. Bhinder gave the plane's location, and Quinn provided the designated route into London. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Minutes later, the flight disappeared from radar. The bomb had exploded. Everyone on board was dead. Pieces of the white fuselage with red Air India markings floated off the Irish coast. The Air India bombing took the lives of Majar Sidhu's sister, Sukhwinder, his niece, Parminder, 10, and nephew, Kuldip, 9. Photo by Arlen Redekop / PNG Majar Sidhu at home looking at photos of his family in Vancouver on June 11, 2025. Photo by Arlen Redekop / PNG On the other side of the world, at Tokyo's Narita Airport, another suitcase bomb from Vancouver had exploded 54 minutes earlier, killing baggage handlers Hideo Assano, 23, and Hindeharu Koda, 24. It had been tagged for another Air India flight, but detonated before reaching its target. The aftermath Back in Vancouver, Majar Sidhu was at work at a plywood plant when his brother-in-law and a friend showed up. They told him he needed to go home, that his wife was sick. He left with them. Other family members had already arrived at the large house on Prince Albert Street and East 59th Avenue — across from Moberly Elementary where his niece and nephew had just finished the school year. 'So many people heard the news early in the morning,' Sidhu said. Devastated at the unimaginable loss, Sidhu had no time to grieve. Like so many family members around the world, he headed to Ireland, where a makeshift morgue had been set up in the Cork hospital's gym. Among the 131 bodies recovered from the crash site in the first month, he searched for his sister and the children. He found Sukhwinder and Parminder. But not Kuldip. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Renée Saklikar lost her aunt and uncle in the Air India bombing. Photo by Kim Bolan/Postmedia / PNG It's just the terror of hearing your mom scream, a scream I've never heard before and probably never heard her do again. Renée Saklikar 'We took the bodies to India at that time. Her father-in-law wanted them there.' Renée Saklikar will never forget hearing her mother's scream when the call came into their New Westminster home. 'Going back to that moment, what I remember — it's just the terror of hearing your mom scream, a scream I've never heard before and probably never heard her do again,' Saklikar said in a recent interview. 'She was such a strong, stoic woman, and I know it broke her in 1,000 ways, and somehow she continued on like all the other families.' Her dad, Vasant Saklikar, a United Church minister, met up with his brother-in-law Yusef Patel and wife Nila for the trip to Ireland. 'My dear, beloved father — quiet, unassuming, strong, so strong. He was such a Canadian. You know, there's this wonderful saying right now, 'Modest doesn't mean weak.' That was my dad. And he flew in an instant to Toronto. 'Very few bodies were recovered, but my aunt's body was, and they had to take her to India,' said Saklikar, a poet and a lawyer who has written a book of poetry called Children of Air India. Jayashree Thampi was at home in Toronto when a friend in Montreal called her that fateful Sunday. 'He wouldn't say what it was. He just kept telling me to call my other friend from Toronto to come and stay with me,' she recalled in a recent interview. 'And I was asking: 'What are you talking about? Why?'' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Before long, the buzzer went off in her apartment. Friends were arriving. They turned on the television. The crash was all over the news. 'It was like a fog. It's very difficult to go back to remember what I was thinking at the moment. I was numb. It was not registering in my head what I was seeing.' Natasha Madon, whose father was killed on Air India flight 182 when it exploded over Ireland in 1985, attends a memorial at Ceperley Park in Vancouver's Stanley Park in 2007. Photo by Arlen Redekop / PROVINCE Her sister from Detroit soon arrived and was 'inconsolable, but I couldn't cry. My sister kept telling me to cry. 'It's good for you,'' Thampi said. The sisters made their way to Cork. Thampi said her boss at the Bank of Montreal told her to take all the time she needed. 'People in Ireland have unbelievable kindness. And you know, that gives you hope in humanity,' Thampi told Postmedia. She recalled arriving later than other families and missing a boat trip to the crash site. 'People wanted to visit to throw flowers.' The boat skipper agreed to take a second group to the spot. But Thampi had no flowers. The man driving them to the boat stopped at a house and went to talk to a woman inside. 'She invited us in, and she cut loads of flowers for us,' recalled Thampi. 'I was so touched. I was so emotional.' Anil Hanse was in Aberdeen, staying with fellow divers at a guest house when he first heard there was an issue with an Air India flight. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Irish sailors unload debris from the flight on June 29, 1985, at a navy base in Cork. Photo by ANDRE DURAND / AFP via Getty Images An American diver who constantly listened to the BBC told Hanse that 'an Air India plane's gone down.' Panicked, he got on the phone to Air India 'and they would not say a word.' The plane's delayed, they told him. 'I said, 'Look, can you tell me, is this plane in the air or is it down?' It's missing. That's what they said to me. It's missing.' He headed for London to camp out at the Air India offices there. Others — shocked and panicked — were arriving, too. 'That's where the tailspin started,' said Hanse, who now lives in Melbourne, Australia. Air India put up relatives of the crew members at a hotel near Heathrow Airport. Hanse met Sanjay Lazar there and the two travelled to Cork together. They had to fill out forms about what their loved ones looked like, what they might have been wearing, any distinctive features. 'They wouldn't let us look at bodies — just at pictures,' Hanse said. His father, just two years from retirement, was never found. 'The man loved to fly. And he loved Air India.' Lazar was escorted from Mumbai to London by his little sister's godfather. He had told the teen that his father had called for them — a lie to protect Lazar from the truth just a little longer. By the time he was settled in the Heathrow hotel, he realized, 'It was no longer a missing aircraft. It was obviously a bomb or a crashed aircraft.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. In the middle of the night, there was a bomb scare at the hotel, he said in a recent interview while visiting Canada. Irish soldiers carry one of the victims of the Air India disaster. Photo by Redman / The Associated Press How can you do this? Bomb an aircraft? Sanjay Lazar 'There were hundreds of people in the car park and the bomb squad and the cops came,' he said. 'The shock hit me when I was out there without a shirt. It was freezing … it then struck me that these guys are devious murderers. Whoever is doing this is really crazy. How can you do this? Bomb an aircraft?' His three weeks in Cork were devastating for Lazar, who was orphaned in the bombing. At one point, he believed he had found his baby sister — a little body with the same coloured clothing and jewelry. He prepared to take her home. But right before he was due to leave, another family also claimed the child. The shape of pearls found on the child's jewelry was slightly different from those that Sandeeta had worn. It was not his sister. He was about to return to India when the Irish Garda called and said they had found his pregnant stepmother. It would later come out that her cause of death — as it was for several others recovered from the sea — was drowning. Forty years after their shattering loss, all of the families interviewed told Postmedia the same thing: No one from the Canadian government or the RCMP reached out to them for years. They felt forgotten and ignored. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Within days of the two bombings, the RCMP believed both were part of a terrorist plot hatched in British Columbia by a small group linked to the Babbar Khalsa Sikh separatist group. They had been preaching revenge against the Indian government for months after its June 1984 attack on Punjab's Sri Harmandir Sahib — the Golden Temple — Sikhism's holiest shrine. Hundreds of pilgrims inside the complex were killed. Canada's fledging spy agency, CSIS, had been watching and surreptitiously recording the suspects, led by Babbar Khalsa founder and Burnaby resident Talwinder Singh Parmar. Air India suspects Talwinder Singh Parmar (centre) with Ajaib Bagri (left) at a press conference in 1987. Parmar was killed by police in Punjab in 1992, while Bagri was later charged and acquitted in the bombing Photo by Wayne Leidenfrost / PROVINCE Some agents even followed Parmar and a mystery man dubbed Mr. X over to Vancouver Island on June 4, 1985, where they met Duncan electrician Inderjit Singh Reyat and went off into the woods to test a bomb. The agents later said they heard the bang, but thought the trio had fired a gun. No action was taken at the time. While there was virtually no forensic evidence linked to the explosion that brought down Air India Flight 182, the Narita bombing left a trail that would lead investigators back to Duncan and Reyat. He was eventually charged with manslaughter and convicted in 1991 for his role in the Narita terrorist bombing. He was sentenced to 10 years. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. By then, Parmar was living underground in Punjab, where police captured him in October 1992, torturing him to confess and later killing him. They falsely claimed that he merely died in an encounter with police. The trail for other suspects went cold. The investigation into Canada's worst-ever mass murder had completely stalled. But not for long. RCMP Assistant Commissioner Gary Bass chats with victim's family members in Bantry town square in Cork, Ireland, in 2005. Vancouver Sun Within days of Parmar's death in 1992, RCMP officer Gary Bass was transferred to British Columbia to head up the major crimes section. A senior investigator originally from the Maritimes, Bass would become a key figure in setting a new direction for the Air India probe. In 1995, he set up a review team of senior investigators with 'a set of fresh eyes' who could look at what had been done and see if there were new avenues that could be explored. They offered a $1-million reward. More officers were added to the task force. And the new team reached out to long-ignored family members. 'The challenges were nearly insurmountable in terms of just the scope of what we were trying to do after 10 years,' Bass, who retired as a deputy commissioner, said in a recent interview. 'One of the big things, I think, was introducing ourselves to the families and trying to overcome the frustrations they had of having no contact and many years of not knowing what was going on.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Ripudaman Singh Malik (right) leaves B.C. Supreme Court with supporters after he was found not guilty in the 1985 bombing of Air India flight 182, in Vancouver in 2005. Photo by RICHARD LAM / The Canadian Press The other big challenge was 'just organizing the file,' he said. 'Hundreds of thousands of photos and videos had to be digitized.' And the team had to get ready for massive disclosure — a 1991 Supreme Court of Canada ruling called 'Stinchcombe' changed disclosure rules, meaning prosecutors had to turn over all potentially relevant evidence, whether or not they planned to use it at trial. They also worked hard on securing witnesses and setting up wiretap operations in the late '90s. There was a sense — publicly — that the case was active again. But there were also frustrations, particularly over evidence that no longer existed. It was public knowledge that hundreds of hours of wiretaps CSIS had made of calls between Parmar and other suspects had been erased, leaving only logs with basic information about what was said. Bass wrote a scathing memo to CSIS in February 1996, attacking the erasures, calling the lost wiretaps of 'highly probative value' and saying charges could have been laid years earlier if the tapes had been saved. But his team pushed forward. In October 2000, Parmar associates Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik were charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy. Reyat was also charged again — this time in the actual Air India bombing. He later entered a guilty plea — but only to manslaughter — and got another five years in jail. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Relatives of the victims said they finally believed they might get some long-overdue justice. But on March 16, 2005, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Ian Bruce Josephson said the Crown's case fell 'markedly short' and acquitted both men to their supporters' cheers. Family members of the dead wept in the courtroom. Bass still strongly believes that 'we had a good case.' 'We felt tremendous disappointment for the families and for everyone who had worked so hard on the investigation,' he said of the acquittals. He also still believes the right suspects were charged and that the witnesses who agreed to testify told the truth, including the so-called star witness — a former daycare supervisor who worked with Malik at a Surrey independent school. She testified that he had confessed his role in the bombing to her. She was forced into witness protection after a series of pretrial threats. By the spring of 2006, then-prime minister Stephen Harper called a judicial inquiry into the terrorist attack and failed prosecution. It was headed by retired Supreme Court of Canada Justice John Major. Jacques Shore was one of the lawyers representing the Air India Victims Families Association. At the time of the bombings, Shore was a young lawyer who had just started as the director of research and security for the Security Intelligence Review Committee, then the external oversight body for CSIS. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'I just had this sense that something very, very, very bad had happened,' Shore recalled in a recent interview. Pieces of the fuselage of Air India Flight 182 were on display in a warehouse in Vancouver in 2004 at a secret location, as RCMP began reconstructing the plane in January 2003 for the Air India trial. Photo by Arlen Redekop / Postmedia 'In the ensuing days, I did have some documents in front of me that obviously made it very clear that something had gone wrong, and what had gone wrong was, effectively, an intelligence failure.' He wanted to follow up at the time but was told to pull back because of the criminal investigation. After 21 years, he was finally able to ask some hard questions on behalf of the families. There were revelations of missed warnings and systemic errors. A June 1, 1985, Air India Telex had warned of a possible bomb plot against the airline in Canada. A bomb-detection dog was on duty in Montreal when the plane landed but was not called in to check the flight. Former CSIS official Jack Hooper testified that erasing the Parmar tapes was the agency's policy: 'Who cares, quite frankly, if we destroyed the tapes?' Shore said the inquiry showed 'there were tremendous gaps in the intelligence-gathering at that time.' It was also critical, he said, that Major allowed victims' families to come and testify about their loved ones and what they had lost. 'That was one of the most sensitive steps ever taken by a Royal Commission of Inquiry, to recognize that we had to first remember who the victims were of this heinous terrorist crime,' he said. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. On June 17, 2010, Major made 64 recommendations to ensure the 'cascading series of errors' that led to the bombings and plagued the investigation would never be repeated. Justice John Major in 2006 opens the Air India Inquiry into the bombing of Air India flight 182. THE OTTAWA CITIZEN 'The level of error, incompetence, and inattention which took place before the flight was sadly mirrored in many ways, for many years, in how authorities, governments, and institutions dealt with the aftermath of the murder of so many innocents: in the investigation, the legal proceedings, and in providing information, support and comfort to the families,' he said. In the years since, some of the recommendations have been implemented, Shore said. Others have collected dust. 'It is always the government that basically makes the choice … as to the way in which a commission's report is implemented,' Shore said. Right after the inquiry, he believed the will was there to make changes that 'would be weaved into almost everything that we do within the field of criminal justice and security intelligence work.' 'Unfortunately, as the years have gone on, there have not been enough of the — if I may say — torchbearers to insist that that's the case.' June 2025 Even after 40 years, June is the hardest month, Majar Sidhu says. Memories of his murdered sister, niece and nephew are constant. The lack of justice for their deaths is a gnawing pain. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. There are tears in his eyes as he flips through a photo album of the kids playing in the yard, posing at Christmas, enjoying their birthday parties. His own children, who were younger than their cousins, barely remember them. A man at the annual Air India memorial service at the Memorial wall in Stanley Park, Vancouver, in 2018. Photo by Gerry Kahrmann / Postmedia Like other Air India families, he feels Canada has also forgotten them. Few beyond those directly impacted show up at the memorial his family organizes in Stanley Park every June 23. The Air India terrorist attack is not taught in schools. 'We want that because children should know about this tragedy. This bomb was made here,' he said at his home in South Vancouver, less than five kilometres from the airport where the suitcase bombs were checked in. And he still feels ignored by police and by politicians. 'Up to today, nobody has come to us, and nobody is telling us what's going on, or what they're doing.' Renée Saklikar says the anniversary is particularly painful now that both her parents are gone. It's also painful to see the resurgence of the Khalistan separatist movement to which the Air India killers belonged. Parmar's photo still hangs in some gurdwaras and on floats in annual Vaisakhi parades. Some pro-Khalistan protesters attended the Air India memorials in both Vancouver and Toronto last year, upsetting families and organizers. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'I don't care if you use violence to achieve your end as a state, trying to destroy people or as individuals in a cause — it's just wrong,' she said. 'How dare people who have these romanticized notions of whatever they have come to a memorial like they did.' She attended a conference at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., last month where families spoke of their ongoing trauma and their desire to better memorialize the unprecedented terrorist attack that changed their lives forever. The university has also created the Air India archive. 'What hurts so much is to see the denial and erasure by a whole generation of people,' she said. She doesn't see herself or her cousin Irfan as 'victims' despite all they've been through. 'He's so positive, generous, a strong person, and he's brought up his sons so well, and they're so strong and positive. These would be the grandchildren of my auntie and uncle, that is what keeps me going,' she said. Jayashree Thampi was also at the McMaster conference. In the early years after the bombing, she tried to move on with her life. She married Venu Thampi, who lost his wife, Vijaya, on the same flight. She became mom to six-year-old Nisha. Son Vivek was born in 1989. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The Air India Memorial at Commissioner's Park in Ottawa. Photo by David Kawai / CNS Forty years later, I feel as if we are still back where we were. Jayashree Thampi Five months after the devastating not-guilty verdict, the Thampis almost experienced another horrible loss. Vivek, then 17, was aboard an Air France flight that overshot the runway at Toronto's Pearson International Airport on Aug. 2, 2005. The plane crashed into a creek. Vivek was OK. Unlike 20 years earlier, the Thampis got help. Air France offered counselling. And, for the first time, Thampi was able to cry for her dead daughter. She has spent years since working to get memorials built for Preethi and the other Air India victims. But she also feels that Air India has been largely forgotten by Canadians. 'Forty years later, I feel as if we are still back where we were,' she said. 'There's not much of a recognition.' While June 23 has been declared a day to remember the victims of terrorism, Air India is often not specifically mentioned. More Canadians commemorate the victims of 9/11. 'It is the worst mass terrorist attack on Canadians perpetrated on Canadian soil,' Thampi said. 'It is not kept in Canadians' conscience. People don't know, and the younger generation absolutely don't know.' Living far away in Australia has not made the legacy of Air India easier for Anil Hanse. 'I'm still one angry man when it comes down to Air India,' Hanse said. 'Look, the RCMP didn't get their man on this one.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Even his adult children have been impacted, despite never meeting their grandfather. 'Forty years is a long time gone. For me, I just need to cope and not fall apart, even at this stage,' he said. 'I'm going to just reflect quietly on this day, not really get involved.' Sanjay Lazar plans to be in Ahakista, Ireland, with other families at the June 23 memorial service for those lost so long ago. But he has not given up the fight. After a successful career at Air India, he took early retirement and wrote a memoir called On Angels' Wings. He continues to speak around the world about the terrorist attack. He won't let people forget. 'This is the largest aviation bombing. You can't wish it away,' he said. 'Should we not talk about it? Should we not learn from it?' kbolan@ Kim Bolan is an award-winning Vancouver Sun journalist who has covered the Air India bombing since the day it happened. In September 2005, she published a book on the case, Loss of Faith: How the Air India Bombers Got Away With Murder.
The Province
18-06-2025
- General
- The Province
Canada's worst terrorist attack: Air India families still feel anguish and frustration 40 years later
On June 23, 1985, Air India Flight 182 was ripped out of the sky by a Canadian-made bomb. Most of the 329 people killed were Canadians. Forty years after their shattering loss, their families feel forgotten and ignored. Flowers placed at a site where an event honouring the memory of those who lost their lives on June 23, 1985 in Canada's worst terrorist attack. Photo by Nick Procaylo / PNG Majar Sidhu recalls how excited his sister, Sukhwinder, was to travel to India in June 1985 so her 10-year-old daughter, Parminder, and son, Kuldip, age nine, could meet their paternal grandparents. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Exclusive articles by top sports columnists Patrick Johnston, Ben Kuzma, J.J. Abrams and others. Plus, Canucks Report, Sports and Headline News newsletters and events. Unlimited online access to The Province and 15 news sites with one account. The Province ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on. Daily puzzles and comics, including the New York Times Crossword. Support local journalism. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Exclusive articles by top sports columnists Patrick Johnston, Ben Kuzma, J.J. Abrams and others. Plus, Canucks Report, Sports and Headline News newsletters and events. Unlimited online access to The Province and 15 news sites with one account. The Province ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on. Daily puzzles and comics, including the New York Times Crossword. Support local journalism. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors The young widow, who lived with her brother and family in South Vancouver, decided at the last minute to change their tickets to an earlier Air India flight out of Toronto. Another relative took Sukhwinder and the kids to Vancouver Airport on June 22, 1985, as Sidhu had to work. They stopped at the nearby Sikh gurdwara on Ross Street to pray for a safe trip. And then they were on their way. Irish sailors unload bodies on June 29, 1985, at a navy base in Cork, after Air India Flight 182 crashed off the coast of Ireland on June 23. Photo by ANDRE DURAND / AFP via Getty Images Little Kuldip, born after his dad was killed in a car crash near Williams Lake, wanted to be a police officer. Grainy snapshots with white edges show him playing dress-up and carrying a toy gun. His big sister was 'very sweet,' Sidhu said. Just like her mother. Renée Saklikar was also at the Vancouver airport that day, with her mother, father and sister. They were seeing off her beloved aunt and uncle, Zeb and Umar Jethwa, both brilliant surgeons in Gujarat who had made their first trip to Canada. The Jethwas had left their young son, Irfan, at home in India and were eager to get back to him after a lovely visit to the Lower Mainland. A treasured photo taken at the airport shows both of them smiling back at the Saklikars as they headed to the boarding area. In Toronto, Jayashree Thampi was unable to leave on Air India Flight 182 with her husband, Kanaka Lakshmanan, and seven-year-old daughter, Preethi, as she didn't have enough vacation time at her bank job. She planned to join them a couple of weeks later. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Air India pilot Narendra Hanse's widow Sheila and son Anil Hanse. Photo by GLENN BAGLO / VANCOUVER SUN I actually met all the crew. Anil Hanse Lakshmanan, an engineer, had moved to Canada in 1976 with his wife. Canadian-born Preethi loved music and Indian classical dance. Then strangers, Anil Hanse and Sanjay Lazar almost joined relatives on their ill-fated journeys 40 years ago this month. Hanse, then 23, had landed a job as a deep-sea diver in the North Sea, but had been home visiting his parents in Mumbai. His dad, Narendra Singh Hanse, a veteran Air India pilot, suggested his son take advantage of the free family flights to accompany him on a short trip to Canada before returning on Flight 182 to London. The younger Hanse did fly with his dad on the first leg of the Toronto-bound flight — from Mumbai to Delhi. Then he decided he should head to Scotland from Delhi so he could go to work. 'I actually met all the crew. I sat in the cockpit there with Captain (Satwinder) Bhinder and Dad,' Anil Hanse said in a recent interview. 'I sat on the bus with all the cabin crew, with the cockpit crew, and then spent a day with Dad at the hotel in Delhi.' As they parted, they agreed to talk the following Sunday — June 23. For Lazar, then just 17, it was his bad final exam marks that kept him from travelling from India to Canada with his father, Sampath Lazar, his pregnant stepmother, Sylvia, and his three-year-old sister, Sandeeta. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. After he failed his finals, everyone agreed he should stay home to deal with the fallout and his parents — longtime Air India employees — would carry on with their toddler. His father was keen to visit cousins in Toronto for the first time in 25 years. A drifting piece of wreckage, carrying the Air India logo, is seen floating in the water near Cork, Ireland, on June 24, 1985, following the Air India Boeing 747 crash off the Irish coast a day earlier, killing all 329 people on board. Photo by CAULKIN AND REDMAN / ASSOCIATED PRESS Air India 182, good morning. Capt. Satwinder Bhinder Sampath Lazar was the flight supervisor on Flight 182 when it left Toronto for London's Heathrow Airport at 9:02 p.m. on June 22 — an hour and 20 minutes late. After a brief stop in Montreal to pick up more passengers, there were 329 people aboard the Boeing 747 dubbed 'Kanishka.' Most of the passengers — 268 of the 329 — were Canadian citizens. Also on board: A B.C.-made suitcase bomb that had been checked in at Vancouver airport and tagged for Air India flight 182 despite the purported passengers not having confirmed tickets. Less than an hour before the flight was scheduled to land at Heathrow, Shannon Air Traffic Control radioed the cockpit. It was 7:08 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time on June 23, 1985. Bhinder responded to Irish controller Michael Quinn. 'Air India 182, good morning,' the captain said cheerfully, his voice recorded on a scratchy tape that would be played 19 years later in a B.C. courtroom. Bhinder gave the plane's location, and Quinn provided the designated route into London. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Minutes later, the flight disappeared from radar. The bomb had exploded. Everyone on board was dead. Pieces of the white fuselage with red Air India markings floated off the Irish coast. The Air India bombing took the lives of Majar Sidhu's sister, Sukhwinder, his niece, Parminder, 10, and nephew, Kuldip, 9. Photo by Arlen Redekop / PNG Majar Sidhu at home looking at photos of his family in Vancouver on June 11, 2025. Photo by Arlen Redekop / PNG On the other side of the world, at Tokyo's Narita Airport, another suitcase bomb from Vancouver had exploded 54 minutes earlier, killing baggage handlers Hideo Assano, 23, and Hindeharu Koda, 24. It had been tagged for another Air India flight, but detonated before reaching its target. The aftermath Back in Vancouver, Majar Sidhu was at work at a plywood plant when his brother-in-law and a friend showed up. They told him he needed to go home, that his wife was sick. He left with them. Other family members had already arrived at the large house on Prince Albert Street and East 59th Avenue — across from Moberly Elementary where his niece and nephew had just finished the school year. 'So many people heard the news early in the morning,' Sidhu said. Devastated at the unimaginable loss, Sidhu had no time to grieve. Like so many family members around the world, he headed to Ireland, where a makeshift morgue had been set up in the Cork hospital's gym. Among the 131 bodies recovered from the crash site in the first month, he searched for his sister and the children. He found Sukhwinder and Parminder. But not Kuldip. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Renée Saklikar lost her aunt and uncle in the Air India bombing. Photo by Kim Bolan/Postmedia / PNG It's just the terror of hearing your mom scream, a scream I've never heard before and probably never heard her do again. Renée Saklikar 'We took the bodies to India at that time. Her father-in-law wanted them there.' Renée Saklikar will never forget hearing her mother's scream when the call came into their New Westminster home. 'Going back to that moment, what I remember — it's just the terror of hearing your mom scream, a scream I've never heard before and probably never heard her do again,' Saklikar said in a recent interview. 'She was such a strong, stoic woman, and I know it broke her in 1,000 ways, and somehow she continued on like all the other families.' Her dad, Vasant Saklikar, a United Church minister, met up with his brother-in-law Yusef Patel and wife Nila for the trip to Ireland. 'My dear, beloved father — quiet, unassuming, strong, so strong. He was such a Canadian. You know, there's this wonderful saying right now, 'Modest doesn't mean weak.' That was my dad. And he flew in an instant to Toronto. 'Very few bodies were recovered, but my aunt's body was, and they had to take her to India,' said Saklikar, a poet and a lawyer who has written a book of poetry called Children of Air India. Jayashree Thampi was at home in Toronto when a friend in Montreal called her that fateful Sunday. 'He wouldn't say what it was. He just kept telling me to call my other friend from Toronto to come and stay with me,' she recalled in a recent interview. 'And I was asking: 'What are you talking about? Why?'' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Before long, the buzzer went off in her apartment. Friends were arriving. They turned on the television. The crash was all over the news. 'It was like a fog. It's very difficult to go back to remember what I was thinking at the moment. I was numb. It was not registering in my head what I was seeing.' Natasha Madon, whose father was killed on Air India flight 182 when it exploded over Ireland in 1985, attends a memorial at Ceperley Park in Vancouver's Stanley Park in 2007. Photo by Arlen Redekop / PROVINCE Her sister from Detroit soon arrived and was 'inconsolable, but I couldn't cry. My sister kept telling me to cry. 'It's good for you,'' Thampi said. The sisters made their way to Cork. Thampi said her boss at the Bank of Montreal told her to take all the time she needed. 'People in Ireland have unbelievable kindness. And you know, that gives you hope in humanity,' Thampi told Postmedia. She recalled arriving later than other families and missing a boat trip to the crash site. 'People wanted to visit to throw flowers.' The boat skipper agreed to take a second group to the spot. But Thampi had no flowers. The man driving them to the boat stopped at a house and went to talk to a woman inside. 'She invited us in, and she cut loads of flowers for us,' recalled Thampi. 'I was so touched. I was so emotional.' Anil Hanse was in Aberdeen, staying with fellow divers at a guest house when he first heard there was an issue with an Air India flight. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Irish sailors unload debris from the flight on June 29, 1985, at a navy base in Cork. Photo by ANDRE DURAND / AFP via Getty Images An American diver who constantly listened to the BBC told Hanse that 'an Air India plane's gone down.' Panicked, he got on the phone to Air India 'and they would not say a word.' The plane's delayed, they told him. 'I said, 'Look, can you tell me, is this plane in the air or is it down?' It's missing. That's what they said to me. It's missing.' He headed for London to camp out at the Air India offices there. Others — shocked and panicked — were arriving, too. 'That's where the tailspin started,' said Hanse, who now lives in Melbourne, Australia. Air India put up relatives of the crew members at a hotel near Heathrow Airport. Hanse met Sanjay Lazar there and the two travelled to Cork together. They had to fill out forms about what their loved ones looked like, what they might have been wearing, any distinctive features. 'They wouldn't let us look at bodies — just at pictures,' Hanse said. His father, just two years from retirement, was never found. 'The man loved to fly. And he loved Air India.' Lazar was escorted from Mumbai to London by his little sister's godfather. He had told the teen that his father had called for them — a lie to protect Lazar from the truth just a little longer. By the time he was settled in the Heathrow hotel, he realized, 'It was no longer a missing aircraft. It was obviously a bomb or a crashed aircraft.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. In the middle of the night, there was a bomb scare at the hotel, he said in a recent interview while visiting Canada. Irish soldiers carry one of the victims of the Air India disaster. Photo by Redman / The Associated Press How can you do this? Bomb an aircraft? Sanjay Lazar 'There were hundreds of people in the car park and the bomb squad and the cops came,' he said. 'The shock hit me when I was out there without a shirt. It was freezing … it then struck me that these guys are devious murderers. Whoever is doing this is really crazy. How can you do this? Bomb an aircraft?' His three weeks in Cork were devastating for Lazar, who was orphaned in the bombing. At one point, he believed he had found his baby sister — a little body with the same coloured clothing and jewelry. He prepared to take her home. But right before he was due to leave, another family also claimed the child. The shape of pearls found on the child's jewelry was slightly different from those that Sandeeta had worn. It was not his sister. He was about to return to India when the Irish Garda called and said they had found his pregnant stepmother. It would later come out that her cause of death — as it was for several others recovered from the sea — was drowning. Forty years after their shattering loss, all of the families interviewed told Postmedia the same thing: No one from the Canadian government or the RCMP reached out to them for years. They felt forgotten and ignored. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Within days of the two bombings, the RCMP believed both were part of a terrorist plot hatched in British Columbia by a small group linked to the Babbar Khalsa Sikh separatist group. They had been preaching revenge against the Indian government for months after its June 1984 attack on Punjab's Sri Harmandir Sahib — the Golden Temple — Sikhism's holiest shrine. Hundreds of pilgrims inside the complex were killed. Canada's fledging spy agency, CSIS, had been watching and surreptitiously recording the suspects, led by Babbar Khalsa founder and Burnaby resident Talwinder Singh Parmar. Air India suspects Talwinder Singh Parmar (centre) with Ajaib Bagri (left) at a press conference in 1987. Parmar was killed by police in Punjab in 1992, while Bagri was later charged and acquitted in the bombing Photo by Wayne Leidenfrost / PROVINCE Some agents even followed Parmar and a mystery man dubbed Mr. X over to Vancouver Island on June 4, 1985, where they met Duncan electrician Inderjit Singh Reyat and went off into the woods to test a bomb. The agents later said they heard the bang, but thought the trio had fired a gun. No action was taken at the time. While there was virtually no forensic evidence linked to the explosion that brought down Air India Flight 182, the Narita bombing left a trail that would lead investigators back to Duncan and Reyat. He was eventually charged with manslaughter and convicted in 1991 for his role in the Narita terrorist bombing. He was sentenced to 10 years. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. By then, Parmar was living underground in Punjab, where police captured him in October 1992, torturing him to confess and later killing him. They falsely claimed that he merely died in an encounter with police. The trail for other suspects went cold. The investigation into Canada's worst-ever mass murder had completely stalled. But not for long. RCMP Assistant Commissioner Gary Bass chats with victim's family members in Bantry town square in Cork, Ireland, in 2005. Vancouver Sun Within days of Parmar's death in 1992, RCMP officer Gary Bass was transferred to British Columbia to head up the major crimes section. A senior investigator originally from the Maritimes, Bass would become a key figure in setting a new direction for the Air India probe. In 1995, he set up a review team of senior investigators with 'a set of fresh eyes' who could look at what had been done and see if there were new avenues that could be explored. They offered a $1-million reward. More officers were added to the task force. And the new team reached out to long-ignored family members. 'The challenges were nearly insurmountable in terms of just the scope of what we were trying to do after 10 years,' Bass, who retired as a deputy commissioner, said in a recent interview. 'One of the big things, I think, was introducing ourselves to the families and trying to overcome the frustrations they had of having no contact and many years of not knowing what was going on.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Ripudaman Singh Malik (right) leaves B.C. Supreme Court with supporters after he was found not guilty in the 1985 bombing of Air India flight 182, in Vancouver in 2005. Photo by RICHARD LAM / The Canadian Press The other big challenge was 'just organizing the file,' he said. 'Hundreds of thousands of photos and videos had to be digitized.' And the team had to get ready for massive disclosure — a 1991 Supreme Court of Canada ruling called 'Stinchcombe' changed disclosure rules, meaning prosecutors had to turn over all potentially relevant evidence, whether or not they planned to use it at trial. They also worked hard on securing witnesses and setting up wiretap operations in the late '90s. There was a sense — publicly — that the case was active again. But there were also frustrations, particularly over evidence that no longer existed. It was public knowledge that hundreds of hours of wiretaps CSIS had made of calls between Parmar and other suspects had been erased, leaving only logs with basic information about what was said. Bass wrote a scathing memo to CSIS in February 1996, attacking the erasures, calling the lost wiretaps of 'highly probative value' and saying charges could have been laid years earlier if the tapes had been saved. But his team pushed forward. In October 2000, Parmar associates Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik were charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy. Reyat was also charged again — this time in the actual Air India bombing. He later entered a guilty plea — but only to manslaughter — and got another five years in jail. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Relatives of the victims said they finally believed they might get some long-overdue justice. But on March 16, 2005, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Ian Bruce Josephson said the Crown's case fell 'markedly short' and acquitted both men to their supporters' cheers. Family members of the dead wept in the courtroom. Bass still strongly believes that 'we had a good case.' 'We felt tremendous disappointment for the families and for everyone who had worked so hard on the investigation,' he said of the acquittals. He also still believes the right suspects were charged and that the witnesses who agreed to testify told the truth, including the so-called star witness — a former daycare supervisor who worked with Malik at a Surrey independent school. She testified that he had confessed his role in the bombing to her. She was forced into witness protection after a series of pretrial threats. By the spring of 2006, then-prime minister Stephen Harper called a judicial inquiry into the terrorist attack and failed prosecution. It was headed by retired Supreme Court of Canada Justice John Major. Jacques Shore was one of the lawyers representing the Air India Victims Families Association. At the time of the bombings, Shore was a young lawyer who had just started as the director of research and security for the Security Intelligence Review Committee, then the external oversight body for CSIS. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'I just had this sense that something very, very, very bad had happened,' Shore recalled in a recent interview. Pieces of the fuselage of Air India Flight 182 were on display in a warehouse in Vancouver in 2004 at a secret location, as RCMP began reconstructing the plane in January 2003 for the Air India trial. Photo by Arlen Redekop / Postmedia 'In the ensuing days, I did have some documents in front of me that obviously made it very clear that something had gone wrong, and what had gone wrong was, effectively, an intelligence failure.' He wanted to follow up at the time but was told to pull back because of the criminal investigation. After 21 years, he was finally able to ask some hard questions on behalf of the families. There were revelations of missed warnings and systemic errors. A June 1, 1985, Air India Telex had warned of a possible bomb plot against the airline in Canada. A bomb-detection dog was on duty in Montreal when the plane landed but was not called in to check the flight. Former CSIS official Jack Hooper testified that erasing the Parmar tapes was the agency's policy: 'Who cares, quite frankly, if we destroyed the tapes?' Shore said the inquiry showed 'there were tremendous gaps in the intelligence-gathering at that time.' It was also critical, he said, that Major allowed victims' families to come and testify about their loved ones and what they had lost. 'That was one of the most sensitive steps ever taken by a Royal Commission of Inquiry, to recognize that we had to first remember who the victims were of this heinous terrorist crime,' he said. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. On June 17, 2010, Major made 64 recommendations to ensure the 'cascading series of errors' that led to the bombings and plagued the investigation would never be repeated. Justice John Major in 2006 opens the Air India Inquiry into the bombing of Air India flight 182. THE OTTAWA CITIZEN 'The level of error, incompetence, and inattention which took place before the flight was sadly mirrored in many ways, for many years, in how authorities, governments, and institutions dealt with the aftermath of the murder of so many innocents: in the investigation, the legal proceedings, and in providing information, support and comfort to the families,' he said. In the years since, some of the recommendations have been implemented, Shore said. Others have collected dust. 'It is always the government that basically makes the choice … as to the way in which a commission's report is implemented,' Shore said. Right after the inquiry, he believed the will was there to make changes that 'would be weaved into almost everything that we do within the field of criminal justice and security intelligence work.' 'Unfortunately, as the years have gone on, there have not been enough of the — if I may say — torchbearers to insist that that's the case.' June 2025 Even after 40 years, June is the hardest month, Majar Sidhu says. Memories of his murdered sister, niece and nephew are constant. The lack of justice for their deaths is a gnawing pain. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. There are tears in his eyes as he flips through a photo album of the kids playing in the yard, posing at Christmas, enjoying their birthday parties. His own children, who were younger than their cousins, barely remember them. A man at the annual Air India memorial service at the Memorial wall in Stanley Park, Vancouver, in 2018. Photo by Gerry Kahrmann / Postmedia Like other Air India families, he feels Canada has also forgotten them. Few beyond those directly impacted show up at the memorial his family organizes in Stanley Park every June 23. The Air India terrorist attack is not taught in schools. 'We want that because children should know about this tragedy. This bomb was made here,' he said at his home in South Vancouver, less than five kilometres from the airport where the suitcase bombs were checked in. And he still feels ignored by police and by politicians. 'Up to today, nobody has come to us, and nobody is telling us what's going on, or what they're doing.' Renée Saklikar says the anniversary is particularly painful now that both her parents are gone. It's also painful to see the resurgence of the Khalistan separatist movement to which the Air India killers belonged. Parmar's photo still hangs in some gurdwaras and on floats in annual Vaisakhi parades. Some pro-Khalistan protesters attended the Air India memorials in both Vancouver and Toronto last year, upsetting families and organizers. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'I don't care if you use violence to achieve your end as a state, trying to destroy people or as individuals in a cause — it's just wrong,' she said. 'How dare people who have these romanticized notions of whatever they have come to a memorial like they did.' She attended a conference at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., last month where families spoke of their ongoing trauma and their desire to better memorialize the unprecedented terrorist attack that changed their lives forever. The university has also created the Air India archive. 'What hurts so much is to see the denial and erasure by a whole generation of people,' she said. She doesn't see herself or her cousin Irfan as 'victims' despite all they've been through. 'He's so positive, generous, a strong person, and he's brought up his sons so well, and they're so strong and positive. These would be the grandchildren of my auntie and uncle, that is what keeps me going,' she said. Jayashree Thampi was also at the McMaster conference. In the early years after the bombing, she tried to move on with her life. She married Venu Thampi, who lost his wife, Vijaya, on the same flight. She became mom to six-year-old Nisha. Son Vivek was born in 1989. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The Air India Memorial at Commissioner's Park in Ottawa. Photo by David Kawai / CNS Forty years later, I feel as if we are still back where we were. Jayashree Thampi Five months after the devastating not-guilty verdict, the Thampis almost experienced another horrible loss. Vivek, then 17, was aboard an Air France flight that overshot the runway at Toronto's Pearson International Airport on Aug. 2, 2005. The plane crashed into a creek. Vivek was OK. Unlike 20 years earlier, the Thampis got help. Air France offered counselling. And, for the first time, Thampi was able to cry for her dead daughter. She has spent years since working to get memorials built for Preethi and the other Air India victims. But she also feels that Air India has been largely forgotten by Canadians. 'Forty years later, I feel as if we are still back where we were,' she said. 'There's not much of a recognition.' While June 23 has been declared a day to remember the victims of terrorism, Air India is often not specifically mentioned. More Canadians commemorate the victims of 9/11. 'It is the worst mass terrorist attack on Canadians perpetrated on Canadian soil,' Thampi said. 'It is not kept in Canadians' conscience. People don't know, and the younger generation absolutely don't know.' Living far away in Australia has not made the legacy of Air India easier for Anil Hanse. 'I'm still one angry man when it comes down to Air India,' Hanse said. 'Look, the RCMP didn't get their man on this one.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Even his adult children have been impacted, despite never meeting their grandfather. 'Forty years is a long time gone. For me, I just need to cope and not fall apart, even at this stage,' he said. 'I'm going to just reflect quietly on this day, not really get involved.' Sanjay Lazar plans to be in Ahakista, Ireland, with other families at the June 23 memorial service for those lost so long ago. But he has not given up the fight. After a successful career at Air India, he took early retirement and wrote a memoir called On Angels' Wings. He continues to speak around the world about the terrorist attack. He won't let people forget. 'This is the largest aviation bombing. You can't wish it away,' he said. 'Should we not talk about it? Should we not learn from it?' kbolan@ Kim Bolan is an award-winning Vancouver Sun journalist who has covered the Air India bombing since the day it happened. In September 2005, she published a book on the case, Loss of Faith: How the Air India Bombers Got Away With Murder.
National Post
18-06-2025
- General
- National Post
Canada's worst terrorist attack: Air India families still feel anguish and frustration 40 years later
On June 23, 1985, Air India Flight 182 was ripped out of the sky by a Canadian-made bomb. Most of the 329 people killed were Canadians. Forty years after their shattering loss, their families feel forgotten and ignored Article content June 1985 Majar Sidhu recalls how excited his sister, Sukhwinder, was to travel to India in June 1985 so her 10-year-old daughter, Parminder, and son, Kuldip, age nine, could meet their paternal grandparents. The young widow, who lived with her brother and family in South Vancouver, decided at the last minute to change their tickets to an earlier Air India flight out of Toronto. And then they were on their way. Little Kuldip, born after his dad was killed in a car crash near Williams Lake, wanted to be a police officer. Grainy snapshots with white edges show him playing dress-up and carrying a toy gun. His big sister was 'very sweet,' Sidhu said. Just like her mother. Renée Saklikar was also at the Vancouver airport that day, with her mother, father and sister. They were seeing off her beloved aunt and uncle, Zeb and Umar Jethwa, both brilliant surgeons in Gujarat who had made their first trip to Canada. The Jethwas had left their young son, Irfan, at home in India and were eager to get back to him after a lovely visit to the Lower Mainland. A treasured photo taken at the airport shows both of them smiling back at the Saklikars as they headed to the boarding area. In Toronto, Jayashree Thampi was unable to leave on Air India Flight 182 with her husband, Kanaka Lakshmanan, and seven-year-old daughter, Preethi, as she didn't have enough vacation time at her bank job. She planned to join them a couple of weeks later. I actually met all the crew. Anil Hanse Lakshmanan, an engineer, had moved to Canada in 1976 with his wife. Canadian-born Preethi loved music and Indian classical dance. Then strangers, Anil Hanse and Sanjay Lazar almost joined relatives on their ill-fated journeys 40 years ago this month. Hanse, then 23, had landed a job as a deep-sea diver in the North Sea, but had been home visiting his parents in Mumbai. His dad, Narendra Singh Hanse, a veteran Air India pilot, suggested his son take advantage of the free family flights to accompany him on a short trip to Canada before returning on Flight 182 to London. The younger Hanse did fly with his dad on the first leg of the Toronto-bound flight — from Mumbai to Delhi. Then he decided he should head to Scotland from Delhi so he could go to work. 'I actually met all the crew. I sat in the cockpit there with Captain (Satwinder) Bhinder and Dad,' Anil Hanse said in a recent interview. 'I sat on the bus with all the cabin crew, with the cockpit crew, and then spent a day with Dad at the hotel in Delhi.' As they parted, they agreed to talk the following Sunday — June 23. For Lazar, then just 17, it was his bad final exam marks that kept him from travelling from India to Canada with his father, Sampath Lazar, his pregnant stepmother, Sylvia, and his three-year-old sister, Sandeeta. After he failed his finals, everyone agreed he should stay home to deal with the fallout and his parents — longtime Air India employees — would carry on with their toddler. His father was keen to visit cousins in Toronto for the first time in 25 years. Air India 182, good morning. Capt. Satwinder Bhinder Sampath Lazar was the flight supervisor on Flight 182 when it left Toronto for London's Heathrow Airport at 9:02 p.m. on June 22 — an hour and 20 minutes late. After a brief stop in Montreal to pick up more passengers, there were 329 people aboard the Boeing 747 dubbed 'Kanishka.' Most of the passengers — 268 of the 329 — were Canadian citizens. Also on board: A B.C.-made suitcase bomb that had been checked in at Vancouver airport and tagged for Air India flight 182 despite the purported passengers not having confirmed tickets. Less than an hour before the flight was scheduled to land at Heathrow, Shannon Air Traffic Control radioed the cockpit. It was 7:08 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time on June 23, 1985. Bhinder responded to Irish controller Michael Quinn. 'Air India 182, good morning,' the captain said cheerfully, his voice recorded on a scratchy tape that would be played 19 years later in a B.C. courtroom. Bhinder gave the plane's location, and Quinn provided the designated route into London. Minutes later, the flight disappeared from radar. The bomb had exploded. Everyone on board was dead. Pieces of the white fuselage with red Air India markings floated off the Irish coast. On the other side of the world, at Tokyo's Narita Airport, another suitcase bomb from Vancouver had exploded 54 minutes earlier, killing baggage handlers Hideo Assano, 23, and Hindeharu Koda, 24. It had been tagged for another Air India flight, but detonated before reaching its target. The aftermath Back in Vancouver, Majar Sidhu was at work at a plywood plant when his brother-in-law and a friend showed up. They told him he needed to go home, that his wife was sick. He left with them. Other family members had already arrived at the large house on Prince Albert Street and East 59th Avenue — across from Moberly Elementary where his niece and nephew had just finished the school year. 'So many people heard the news early in the morning,' Sidhu said. Devastated at the unimaginable loss, Sidhu had no time to grieve. Like so many family members around the world, he headed to Ireland, where a makeshift morgue had been set up in the Cork hospital's gym. Among the 131 bodies recovered from the crash site in the first month, he searched for his sister and the children. He found Sukhwinder and Parminder. But not Kuldip. It's just the terror of hearing your mom scream, a scream I've never heard before and probably never heard her do again. Renée Saklikar 'We took the bodies to India at that time. Her father-in-law wanted them there.' Renée Saklikar will never forget hearing her mother's scream when the call came into their New Westminster home. 'Going back to that moment, what I remember — it's just the terror of hearing your mom scream, a scream I've never heard before and probably never heard her do again,' Saklikar said in a recent interview. 'She was such a strong, stoic woman, and I know it broke her in 1,000 ways, and somehow she continued on like all the other families.' Her dad, Vasant Saklikar, a United Church minister, met up with his brother-in-law Yusef Patel and wife Nila for the trip to Ireland. 'My dear, beloved father — quiet, unassuming, strong, so strong. He was such a Canadian. You know, there's this wonderful saying right now, 'Modest doesn't mean weak.' That was my dad. And he flew in an instant to Toronto. 'Very few bodies were recovered, but my aunt's body was, and they had to take her to India,' said Saklikar, a poet and a lawyer who has written a book of poetry called Children of Air India. Jayashree Thampi was at home in Toronto when a friend in Montreal called her that fateful Sunday. 'He wouldn't say what it was. He just kept telling me to call my other friend from Toronto to come and stay with me,' she recalled in a recent interview. 'And I was asking: 'What are you talking about? Why?'' Before long, the buzzer went off in her apartment. Friends were arriving. They turned on the television. The crash was all over the news. 'It was like a fog. It's very difficult to go back to remember what I was thinking at the moment. I was numb. It was not registering in my head what I was seeing.' Her sister from Detroit soon arrived and was 'inconsolable, but I couldn't cry. My sister kept telling me to cry. 'It's good for you,'' Thampi said. The sisters made their way to Cork. Thampi said her boss at the Bank of Montreal told her to take all the time she needed. 'People in Ireland have unbelievable kindness. And you know, that gives you hope in humanity,' Thampi told Postmedia. She recalled arriving later than other families and missing a boat trip to the crash site. 'People wanted to visit to throw flowers.' The boat skipper agreed to take a second group to the spot. But Thampi had no flowers. The man driving them to the boat stopped at a house and went to talk to a woman inside. 'She invited us in, and she cut loads of flowers for us,' recalled Thampi. 'I was so touched. I was so emotional.' Anil Hanse was in Aberdeen, staying with fellow divers at a guest house when he first heard there was an issue with an Air India flight. An American diver who constantly listened to the BBC told Hanse that 'an Air India plane's gone down.' Panicked, he got on the phone to Air India 'and they would not say a word.' The plane's delayed, they told him. 'I said, 'Look, can you tell me, is this plane in the air or is it down?' It's missing. That's what they said to me. It's missing.' He headed for London to camp out at the Air India offices there. Others — shocked and panicked — were arriving, too. 'That's where the tailspin started,' said Hanse, who now lives in Melbourne, Australia. Air India put up relatives of the crew members at a hotel near Heathrow Airport. Hanse met Sanjay Lazar there and the two travelled to Cork together. They had to fill out forms about what their loved ones looked like, what they might have been wearing, any distinctive features. 'They wouldn't let us look at bodies — just at pictures,' Hanse said. His father, just two years from retirement, was never found. 'The man loved to fly. And he loved Air India.' Lazar was escorted from Mumbai to London by his little sister's godfather. He had told the teen that his father had called for them — a lie to protect Lazar from the truth just a little longer. By the time he was settled in the Heathrow hotel, he realized, 'It was no longer a missing aircraft. It was obviously a bomb or a crashed aircraft.' In the middle of the night, there was a bomb scare at the hotel, he said in a recent interview while visiting Canada. How can you do this? Bomb an aircraft? Sanjay Lazar 'There were hundreds of people in the car park and the bomb squad and the cops came,' he said. 'The shock hit me when I was out there without a shirt. It was freezing … it then struck me that these guys are devious murderers. Whoever is doing this is really crazy. How can you do this? Bomb an aircraft?' His three weeks in Cork were devastating for Lazar, who was orphaned in the bombing. At one point, he believed he had found his baby sister — a little body with the same coloured clothing and jewelry. He prepared to take her home. But right before he was due to leave, another family also claimed the child. The shape of pearls found on the child's jewelry was slightly different from those that Sandeeta had worn. It was not his sister. He was about to return to India when the Irish Garda called and said they had found his pregnant stepmother. It would later come out that her cause of death — as it was for several others recovered from the sea — was drowning. Forty years after their shattering loss, all of the families interviewed told Postmedia the same thing: No one from the Canadian government or the RCMP reached out to them for years. They felt forgotten and ignored. The investigation and inquiry Within days of the two bombings, the RCMP believed both were part of a terrorist plot hatched in British Columbia by a small group linked to the Babbar Khalsa Sikh separatist group. They had been preaching revenge against the Indian government for months after its June 1984 attack on Punjab's Sri Harmandir Sahib — the Golden Temple — Sikhism's holiest shrine. Hundreds of pilgrims inside the complex were killed. Canada's fledging spy agency, CSIS, had been watching and surreptitiously recording the suspects, led by Babbar Khalsa founder and Burnaby resident Talwinder Singh Parmar. Some agents even followed Parmar and a mystery man dubbed Mr. X over to Vancouver Island on June 4, 1985, where they met Duncan electrician Inderjit Singh Reyat and went off into the woods to test a bomb. The agents later said they heard the bang, but thought the trio had fired a gun. No action was taken at the time. While there was virtually no forensic evidence linked to the explosion that brought down Air India Flight 182, the Narita bombing left a trail that would lead investigators back to Duncan and Reyat. He was eventually charged with manslaughter and convicted in 1991 for his role in the Narita terrorist bombing. He was sentenced to 10 years. By then, Parmar was living underground in Punjab, where police captured him in October 1992, torturing him to confess and later killing him. They falsely claimed that he merely died in an encounter with police. The trail for other suspects went cold. The investigation into Canada's worst-ever mass murder had completely stalled. But not for long. Within days of Parmar's death in 1992, RCMP officer Gary Bass was transferred to British Columbia to head up the major crimes section. A senior investigator originally from the Maritimes, Bass would become a key figure in setting a new direction for the Air India probe. In 1995, he set up a review team of senior investigators with 'a set of fresh eyes' who could look at what had been done and see if there were new avenues that could be explored. They offered a $1-million reward. More officers were added to the task force. And the new team reached out to long-ignored family members. 'The challenges were nearly insurmountable in terms of just the scope of what we were trying to do after 10 years,' Bass, who retired as a deputy commissioner, said in a recent interview. 'One of the big things, I think, was introducing ourselves to the families and trying to overcome the frustrations they had of having no contact and many years of not knowing what was going on.' The other big challenge was 'just organizing the file,' he said. 'Hundreds of thousands of photos and videos had to be digitized.' And the team had to get ready for massive disclosure — a 1991 Supreme Court of Canada ruling called 'Stinchcombe' changed disclosure rules, meaning prosecutors had to turn over all potentially relevant evidence, whether or not they planned to use it at trial. They also worked hard on securing witnesses and setting up wiretap operations in the late '90s. There was a sense — publicly — that the case was active again. But there were also frustrations, particularly over evidence that no longer existed. It was public knowledge that hundreds of hours of wiretaps CSIS had made of calls between Parmar and other suspects had been erased, leaving only logs with basic information about what was said. Bass wrote a scathing memo to CSIS in February 1996, attacking the erasures, calling the lost wiretaps of 'highly probative value' and saying charges could have been laid years earlier if the tapes had been saved. But his team pushed forward. In October 2000, Parmar associates Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik were charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy. Reyat was also charged again — this time in the actual Air India bombing. He later entered a guilty plea — but only to manslaughter — and got another five years in jail. Relatives of the victims said they finally believed they might get some long-overdue justice. But on March 16, 2005, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Ian Bruce Josephson said the Crown's case fell 'markedly short' and acquitted both men to their supporters' cheers. Family members of the dead wept in the courtroom. Bass still strongly believes that 'we had a good case.' 'We felt tremendous disappointment for the families and for everyone who had worked so hard on the investigation,' he said of the acquittals. He also still believes the right suspects were charged and that the witnesses who agreed to testify told the truth, including the so-called star witness — a former daycare supervisor who worked with Malik at a Surrey independent school. She testified that he had confessed his role in the bombing to her. She was forced into witness protection after a series of pretrial threats. By the spring of 2006, then-prime minister Stephen Harper called a judicial inquiry into the terrorist attack and failed prosecution. It was headed by retired Supreme Court of Canada Justice John Major. Jacques Shore was one of the lawyers representing the Air India Victims Families Association. At the time of the bombings, Shore was a young lawyer who had just started as the director of research and security for the Security Intelligence Review Committee, then the external oversight body for CSIS. 'I just had this sense that something very, very, very bad had happened,' Shore recalled in a recent interview. 'In the ensuing days, I did have some documents in front of me that obviously made it very clear that something had gone wrong, and what had gone wrong was, effectively, an intelligence failure.' He wanted to follow up at the time but was told to pull back because of the criminal investigation. After 21 years, he was finally able to ask some hard questions on behalf of the families. There were revelations of missed warnings and systemic errors. A June 1, 1985, Air India Telex had warned of a possible bomb plot against the airline in Canada. A bomb-detection dog was on duty in Montreal when the plane landed but was not called in to check the flight. Former CSIS official Jack Hooper testified that erasing the Parmar tapes was the agency's policy: 'Who cares, quite frankly, if we destroyed the tapes?' Shore said the inquiry showed 'there were tremendous gaps in the intelligence-gathering at that time.' It was also critical, he said, that Major allowed victims' families to come and testify about their loved ones and what they had lost. 'That was one of the most sensitive steps ever taken by a Royal Commission of Inquiry, to recognize that we had to first remember who the victims were of this heinous terrorist crime,' he said. On June 17, 2010, Major made 64 recommendations to ensure the 'cascading series of errors' that led to the bombings and plagued the investigation would never be repeated. 'The level of error, incompetence, and inattention which took place before the flight was sadly mirrored in many ways, for many years, in how authorities, governments, and institutions dealt with the aftermath of the murder of so many innocents: in the investigation, the legal proceedings, and in providing information, support and comfort to the families,' he said. In the years since, some of the recommendations have been implemented, Shore said. Others have collected dust. 'It is always the government that basically makes the choice … as to the way in which a commission's report is implemented,' Shore said. Right after the inquiry, he believed the will was there to make changes that 'would be weaved into almost everything that we do within the field of criminal justice and security intelligence work.' 'Unfortunately, as the years have gone on, there have not been enough of the — if I may say — torchbearers to insist that that's the case.' June 2025 Even after 40 years, June is the hardest month, Majar Sidhu says. Memories of his murdered sister, niece and nephew are constant. The lack of justice for their deaths is a gnawing pain. There are tears in his eyes as he flips through a photo album of the kids playing in the yard, posing at Christmas, enjoying their birthday parties. His own children, who were younger than their cousins, barely remember them. Like other Air India families, he feels Canada has also forgotten them. Few beyond those directly impacted show up at the memorial his family organizes in Stanley Park every June 23. The Air India terrorist attack is not taught in schools. 'We want that because children should know about this tragedy. This bomb was made here,' he said at his home in South Vancouver, less than five kilometres from the airport where the suitcase bombs were checked in. And he still feels ignored by police and by politicians. 'Up to today, nobody has come to us, and nobody is telling us what's going on, or what they're doing.' Renée Saklikar says the anniversary is particularly painful now that both her parents are gone. It's also painful to see the resurgence of the Khalistan separatist movement to which the Air India killers belonged. Parmar's photo still hangs in some gurdwaras and on floats in annual Vaisakhi parades. Some pro-Khalistan protesters attended the Air India memorials in both Vancouver and Toronto last year, upsetting families and organizers. 'I don't care if you use violence to achieve your end as a state, trying to destroy people or as individuals in a cause — it's just wrong,' she said. 'How dare people who have these romanticized notions of whatever they have come to a memorial like they did.' She attended a conference at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., last month where families spoke of their ongoing trauma and their desire to better memorialize the unprecedented terrorist attack that changed their lives forever. The university has also created the Air India archive. 'What hurts so much is to see the denial and erasure by a whole generation of people,' she said. She doesn't see herself or her cousin Irfan as 'victims' despite all they've been through. 'He's so positive, generous, a strong person, and he's brought up his sons so well, and they're so strong and positive. These would be the grandchildren of my auntie and uncle, that is what keeps me going,' she said. Jayashree Thampi was also at the McMaster conference. In the early years after the bombing, she tried to move on with her life. She married Venu Thampi, who lost his wife, Vijaya, on the same flight. She became mom to six-year-old Nisha. Son Vivek was born in 1989. Forty years later, I feel as if we are still back where we were. Jayashree Thampi Five months after the devastating not-guilty verdict, the Thampis almost experienced another horrible loss. Vivek, then 17, was aboard an Air France flight that overshot the runway at Toronto's Pearson International Airport on Aug. 2, 2005. The plane crashed into a creek. Vivek was OK. Unlike 20 years earlier, the Thampis got help. Air France offered counselling. And, for the first time, Thampi was able to cry for her dead daughter. She has spent years since working to get memorials built for Preethi and the other Air India victims. But she also feels that Air India has been largely forgotten by Canadians. 'Forty years later, I feel as if we are still back where we were,' she said. 'There's not much of a recognition.' While June 23 has been declared a day to remember the victims of terrorism, Air India is often not specifically mentioned. More Canadians commemorate the victims of 9/11. 'It is the worst mass terrorist attack on Canadians perpetrated on Canadian soil,' Thampi said. 'It is not kept in Canadians' conscience. People don't know, and the younger generation absolutely don't know.' Living far away in Australia has not made the legacy of Air India easier for Anil Hanse. 'I'm still one angry man when it comes down to Air India,' Hanse said. 'Look, the RCMP didn't get their man on this one.' Even his adult children have been impacted, despite never meeting their grandfather. 'Forty years is a long time gone. For me, I just need to cope and not fall apart, even at this stage,' he said. 'I'm going to just reflect quietly on this day, not really get involved.' Sanjay Lazar plans to be in Ahakista, Ireland, with other families at the June 23 memorial service for those lost so long ago. But he has not given up the fight. After a successful career at Air India, he took early retirement and wrote a memoir called On Angels' Wings. He continues to speak around the world about the terrorist attack. He won't let people forget. 'This is the largest aviation bombing. You can't wish it away,' he said. 'Should we not talk about it? Should we not learn from it?' kbolan@ Kim Bolan is an award-winning Vancouver Sun journalist who has covered the Air India bombing since the day it happened. In September 2005, she published a book on the case, Loss of Faith: How the Air India Bombers Got Away With Murder.
