An Air India plane was bombed on June 6, 1985 while on a flight from Toronto to London. All 9 passengers and crew were killed. The Captain of the aircraft as well as many passengers were Sikhs,

Indian authorities promptly fed Stories that the Sikh extremists were responsible for the bombing, which was picked up by the media all over the world. The Sikh community felt that its name had been tarnished for ever.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) began a probe four years and $60 million later no one has been charged for the dastardly crime.

CSIS director Reid Morden told the justice committee of the Canadian Parliament on June 15 that “Indian government may have had Spies operating in Canada recently, but no longer has.

 

“CISIS Investigators became convinced that the Indian Intelligence Service may have played a role in the bombings. And the further they probed, the more their suspicions grew.”

A book Soft Target by Zuhair Kahsmiri an editor of Canadian National Daily Globe and Mail and Brian Mc Andrew an assistant city editor at the Toronto Star, released a day before the anniversary of the tragedy contends that CSIS investigators believe Indian government Intelligence agencies infiltrated the Canadian Sikh community to discredit its campaign to create an independent state of Khalistan.

CSIS also concluded that “agenis of the government of India were linked to the Air India and Narita bombings,” the book says. The following are excerpts from the book:

CSIS Investigators became convinced that the Indian Intelligence Service may have played a role in the bombings. And the further they probed, the more their suspicions grew.

The case against the Indian Intelligence Service was circumstantial. But it was enough for high level CSIS officials from Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal to stake their reputations and their jobs on convincing CSIS director Ted Finn to stand firm against the pressure for quick solutions exerted by Extremely Affairs and the solicitor general’s office.

Intelligence agencies

Two senior CSIS officials in British Columbia described at a CSIS meeting their version of a criminal flow chart on Sikh violence in Canada. At the very top they placed the government of India and in brackets beside it the Secret Service Bureau, Central Bureau of Investigation, Research and Analysis Wing, and Third Agency (all Indian intelligence agencies). Below that were the names of Indian agents of Influence and agents provocateurs. Below these were the supporters of the Babbar Khalsa ( a militant Sikh group, also operating in Canada) many of them suspects in the two bombings.

CSIS theory of a government in India connection had the support of at least one senior member of the RCMP task force in Vancouver. This individual was pushing internally for a greater emphasis on examining the Indian government’s role in the bombing. He was rebuffed.

Meanwhile CSIS agents continued accumulating fragments of information in support of its contention that the Indian government was involved in the Air India and Narita bombings,

One of CSIS’s first clues came in a very public form the news media which said Pat Olson (pseudonym for a CSIS agent), “blew our minds.”

One day after the crash the Globe and Mail ran a story headlined “Police seeking two fugitives for bombs on jets.” The source of the story was identified only as an ‘It would not be so astounding, though. If the plans emanated from the same source namely from within the Indian Intelligence Service.” official it was later learned it was Surinder Malik the Indian counsel general in Toronto.

Malik said that Lal Singh and Amand Singh the two fugitives sought by the FBI in a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi during his 1985 visit to the United States, were behind the bombing and that a check of the Canadian Pacific Air computer would confirm the presence of L. Singh on the passenger list.

The information in the article came within 16 hours of the crash, when the police had only just finished retrieving the CP Air passenger list stored in the airline’s computer. How could Malik have had access to it and known about the L. Singh when there were dozens of other Singhs on the list?

Curiously Malk knew more details about the two blasts that did the police investigators. In the article he claimed that his source was the Indian Intelligence Network which had traced the methods of planting the bombs and the identity of the culprits within hours. Malik said that while one of the suspects was booked to Japan the other was booked to Toronto and onwards to Bombay. He also said that the two checked their bombladen bags but did not board the flights themselves.

There was also a peculiar string of passenger cancellations in the days preceding Flight 182. In the eyes of CSIS Intelligence analysts the change in travel plans by people associated with the Indian government was suspicious.

The influence of the Indian government seemed to crop up practically everywhere as CSIS agents investigated the Sikh separatists either as national security threats or as suspects in the Air India and Narita bombings. A case in point was a bombing incident in India less than a year earlier that was remarkably similar to the Air India catastrophe.

On August 2, 1984 at Madras Airport two bombs went off killing 29 people and injuring 30 others. Local police linked the bombing to terrorists in Sri Lanka. The police investigation uncovered a plot by Tamil separatists to plant the two explosives filled suitcases on board a flight from Madras to Colombo the capital of Sri Lanka.

The luggage was tagged by an accomplice at Madras airport so that in Colombo the bags would be automatically loaded in the cargo hold of two Air Lanka planes bound for London and Paris. The bombs were timed to go off while the airplanes were still on the ground at Colombo airport.

The passenger who checked the luggage in Madras did not board the flight to Colombo and did not go through the routine customs and immigration checks before the flight departed. Customs officer had singled out the two bags for examination possibly because they were unusually heavy. When they could not find the owner they set the bags aside for later examination. Similar Plans According to Fred Gibson and Pat Olson (pseudonyms for CSIS agents), CSIS found the similar

 

“There was also a peculiar string of passenger cancellations in the days preceding Flight 182. In the eyes of CSIS Intelligence analysts the change in travel plans by people associated with the Indian government was suspicious.”

 It is between the Madras plot and the bombings in Narita and aboard. AirIndia remarkable especially regarding the intended times of detonation. AirIndia Flight 182 was not supposed to blow up in mid.

 

“Gibson and his group took the position that an order to bomb the aircraft on the ground, causing minimal risk of damage to life and property came directly from New Delhi most likely from the Third Agency.”

 

air. The bomb was timed to explode on the ground at Heathrow International Airport during the London refueling stop. Because of the lengthy delay in Toronto the airplane was well behind schedule. It was one hour away from landing in London when the bomb exploded.

CSIS was astounded that such similar plans could be hatched in opposite parts of the world. It would not be so astounding, though. If the plans emanated from the same source namely from within the Indian Intelligence service.

The Indian Intelligence group linked to the Madras bombings was a shadowy outfit known as the Third Agency CSIS learned. The Indian government had created this top secret organization in the early 1900’s to encourage extremist activities by Sikh radicals in Punjab. The aim was to rally support for the government throughout the rest of the country.

After studying reports about the Third Agency, CSIS analysis developed a’ theory that the organization, or one very much like it, had moved into Canada and may have been responsible for the Air India and Narita bombings.

CSIS had enough circumstantial material to reach the conclusion that agents of the government of India were linked to the Air India and Narita bombings. On the question of how deep the involvement was there were two divergent views.

Gibson and his group took the position that an order to bomb the aircraft on the ground, causing minimal risk of damage to life and property, came directly from New Delhi most likely from the Third Agency. Olson and others believed that the Indian operation in Canada went beyond the mandate set out by the Indian government that even though the operatives did receive instructions from New Delhi to neutralize the Sikh separatist movement the idea of planting the bombs was the operatives alone.

In its pursuit of Talwinder Singh Parmar the Vancouver based leader of the Babbar Khalsa movement in Vancouver and by then the prime suspect in Canada in the Air India bombing CSIS was picking up strange and conflicting intelligence reports. They led to develop a theory about the identity of the mysterious Third Man (who was tailed by CSIS in June 1985, near Duncan BC with Parmar and B.C resident Inderjit Singh Reyat and had received a Sanyo stereo tuner from Reyat the same model that ultimately blew up at Narita airport.

Reyat now in England, has been ordered extradited to Canada by Britain High Court to face charges of two counts of manslaughter in the Narita explosion. He has appealed the decision.

CSIS came to believe that the Third Man was Shera Singh a businessman from Punjab and a supporter of India’s ruling Congress Party. Shera Singh was shot and killed in a dispute with a rival wine merchant in Punjab in April 1986, Although Indian police issued an arrest warrant for the killer, the investigation was quashed and the charge never laid said the victims brother, Gurcharan “Joe” Madpuri a Mississauga factory owner who also has strong ties to the Indian government. Madpuri was the president of the Overseas Congress Party, an organization established to assist expatriate East Indians in Canada.

Article extracted from this publication >>  June 30, 1989