Thirty years after Air India flight 182 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Ireland killing all 329 people on board, Canadian police on Tuesday said its investigation into the country's worst terror attack remains "active and ongoing."
Thirty years after Air India flight 182 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Ireland killing all 329 people on board, Canadian police on Tuesday said its investigation into the country's worst terror attack remains "active and ongoing."
On June 23, 1985, an explosion ripped apart Air India Flight 182 en route to New Delhi, killing all 329 people aboard, most of them Canadians of Indian descent. Authorities believe Sikh extremists sabotaged the Boeing 747 'Kanishka', which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.
While Talwinder Singh Parmar, a prime suspect, died in 1992. In 2003, Inderjit Singh Reyat pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Two years later a British Columbia judge found Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik not guilty.
The complex investigation of the crime was hampered by difficulty raising the wreckage from the ocean floor, agency turf wars and challenges persuading witnesses to come forward, The Canadian Press reported. But Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has not closed the file.
A "dedicated team" of Mounties continues to probe the attack on the jetliner and a related explosion at Tokyo's Narita airport, the report quoted Sergeant Annie Linteau, an RCMP spokeswoman as saying.
"Over the last 30 years, the Air India investigation is the longest and certainly one of the most complex domestic terrorism investigations that the RCMP has undertaken in the history of the Canadian judiciary," Linteau said.
"We have continuously worked with various international police agencies in Europe, Asia and North America, who have been extremely co-operative," she said. The Mounties rarely discuss ongoing investigations, and Linteau declined to provide additional details.
Bal Gupta of the Air India Victims Families Association said he had not heard from the RCMP in more than a year. "I don't know anything about progress," said Gupta, who lost his wife in the bombing.
"In principle, any murder file is not closed unless the culprits are sentenced," Gupta was quoted as saying. The federal inquiry into the bombing, led by former Supreme Court justice John Major, said in 2010 that fundamental changes to intelligence handling, criminal prosecutions and aviation security were needed to prevent another deadly attack in the skies.
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