1984 Sikh Genocide | Air India Bombing

The bombing of Air India Flight 182 on June 23, 1985, was one of the most despicable crimes carried out by terrorists [1]. 329 people, including 82 children, perished when a bomb exploded onboard the Boeing 747 over the Atlantic Ocean en route from Montreal to London. The flight included people of all faiths—Hindus, Christians, Muslims, and Sikhs—including the pilot.[2] 268 were Canadian citizens, mostly of Indian descent; 27 were British, 24 were Indian, and 33 were Sikhs.

In the first few hours of the tragedy, it was left to the sailors who were in the area of impact to retrieve the bodies into their lifeboats. Two decades later, a British merchant seaman, Daniel Brown, revealed a scene of unimaginable horror:

“I snatched the hair, and it was my intention to wait for assistance, but I realised it was very light, and I brought the body of a young girl, probably about 8 years old, in the lifeboat… Passing by on the starboard side, I glimpsed a body with long grey hair. I was just expecting an old woman. It was a Sikh gent, eyes open, mouth wide open in a scream, and he had a look of horror on his face… I said a prayer. I was thinking, the families don’t even know what’s happened to them. ” [3]

Inderjit Singh Reyat pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2003 and a charge of aiding in the construction of a bomb that exploded on board the aircraft and also at Narita Airport, Japan. His lawyer, David Gibbons, shared his client’s regret over his role in one of the largest terrorist attacks involving commercial airplanes, only to be surpassed by 9/11.

“He thinks about it every day. Remorse is not a word large enough to get near what he feels for their sorrow, and it falls on deaf ears sometimes. It’s a huge tragedy.”
David Gibbons, Inderjit Singh Rayat’s lawyer.[4]

Furthermore, in the Air India trial, the prosecution, the defence, the judge, and the bomb-maker, Rayat, all agreed that Talwinder Singh Parmar of the militant Babbar Khalsa group was “the leader in the conspiracy to commit these crimes. “[5] The Canadian security authorities had wiretapped his phone at the time he ordered the booking of the plane ticket used to check in the suitcases carrying the bombs. He and the Rayat were even followed into the forest, where a ‘test blast’ was detonated three weeks before the Air India plane exploded over the Atlantic.[6] Parmar died at the hands of the Punjab police in 1992. Two others were acquitted in March 2005.

Another suspect, Ajaib Singh Bagri, an associate of Parmar and the co-founder of the Babbar Khalsa group, had in the previous year at the founding convention of the World Sikh Organisation in New York appeared to be saying: “Until we kill 50,000 Hindus, we will not rest!”[7] He was subsequently acquitted of all charges.

However, in 1995, a newspaper publisher, Tara Singh Hayer, recorded in an affidavit that he heard Bagri admit to a friend that he was involved in the bombing. Three years later, he was dead.[8]

The terrorists planned to down two Air India planes, but the second bomb went off on the ground at Tokyo’s Narita airport, where a second bomb was in the luggage bound for a connecting Air India flight to India.[9]

In 1989, journalists Zuhair Kashmeri and Brian McAndrew wrote a controversial book that fueled conspiracy theories. In it, the authors claimed that India’s spy agencies had for years been engaged in operations to destabilise Canada’s Sikh community and pointed the finger at the Indian government for the bombing.[10]

The Commission of Inquiry would later regard the allegations as ‘fiction’, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) insisted there was no evidence to support the allegations.[11]. However, the journalists were denied cross-examination by Justice John Major, the head of the Inquiry, much to the disappointment to those who have continually raised issues surrounding India’s alleged involvement.

The second edition was published in 2005, in which the authors alluded to links between the Babbar Khalsa and the Indian government while citing one of the alleged bombers, Ripudaman Malik, who was later acquitted of having secured a $2 million line of credit from the State Bank of India to help finance his organisation, and Parmar and cited two anonymous Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) sources claiming:

“In the fall of 1985, CSIS had viewed the Babbar Khalsa as the biggest security threat among Sikhs in Canada. Now it was suddenly discovered that the Babbar Khalsa had links with the government of India. As a result, agents were not surprised that Parmar’s associates could visit India with ease despite his fiery views about Khalistan.”[12]

Nevertheless, despite two thorough and open legal proceedings that took eight years to finish, conspiracy theories abound, claiming it was a “inside job” by Indian intelligence, much like in the case of the September 11 2001 attacks almost twenty years later. The veteran journalist Terry Milewski explains that the Indian government didn’t need to execute a plan to ‘make the separatists look bad’.[13] They were already doing ‘a great job’ at this through sectarian killings, assassinations of opponents, and bombs in trains and markets throughout this period in the Indian state of Punjab.

Babu Turlapati lost his two children, Deepak and Sanjay, aged 11 and 14.

What was shocking, though, which surfaced some two decades later, during John Major’s judicial inquiry, was that the Canadian authorities were warned time and time again about an imbedding attack, despite blatant denials by successive governments. The first of these warnings came from a French-Canadian criminal by the name of Gerry Boudreault, who told the RCMP that ‘some Vancouver Sikhs offered him $200,00 in cash to smuggle a bomb onto Air India’s flight from Montreal to London—Flight 182.’[14]

The second warning relayed to the Vancouver police came from Harmail Singh Grewal, a Sikh who corroborated Boudreault’s testimony, adding the plan ‘involved two planes and two bombs.’[15] Both warnings were ignored. Justice Major also castigated the CSIS for erasing the tape recordings from Parmar’s phone, which could have shed light on the planning of the bombings.

Recent revelations of Indian government collusion with criminal elements within Canadian society have made many Sikhs suspicious again of actions of the Indian state and how their community has been targeted and, in some cases, violently.

The Sikh community in Canada was just as deeply shaken by the terrorist attack that claimed 329 innocent lives as any other affected group. Many still believe that the full truth has yet to emerge. Yet, forty years on, it is a time for reflection and unity—to honour the memory of this tragic event and, above all, to remember the victims and their families with the dignity and compassion they deserve.

“My dead versus your dead is a false dichotomy. The taking of human life is wrong. Should we examine and understand the oppression of Sikhs? Yes. Should we glorify Parmar as a martyr? No. Should we celebrate the beauty of the Sikh religion? Of course. Sat Sri Akal. Truth is eternal.”[16]