CORK, Ireland: International aviation investigators said Tuesday they many never be able to determine whether a bomb caused the crash of an Air India jumbo that went down in the Atlantic with the loss of 39 lives.
While they said all evidence indicated the plane broke up Sunday at an altitude of nearly 6 miles possibly due to an explosion there were obstacles in on pointing the actual fuse.
Jack Young of the National Transportation Safety Board one of four American investigator said the key problem was recovering the planes two in flight recorders, which sank in about 6,000 feet of water about 120 miles off the Irish coast,
“We are not optimistic about recovering the black box,” Young said. “You’re talking about 6,000 feet of water. How do you get something out of 6,000 feet of water? I don’t know. I wish we knew how to recover it.”
Asked if there was hope of establishing the cause of the crash without the recorders, Young said, “There’s always hope, but I’m not optimistic. We have to be realistic.”
(The subsequent investigations followed a trail as crooked as any in a crime thriller.
The Indian government which had planned and executed the bombing to bring a bad name to the Sikh community was fairly successful in this evil design. For a while at least Sikhs were branded international terrorists. However the painstaking work of two Canadian journalists revealed the truth. Zuhair Kashmiri and Brian McAndrew wrote a book “Soft Target” exposing the dirty deeds of the Indian government.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 29, 1990
