A-I victims may never get justice

Looks like the truth about the Kanishka plot may never be out, writes Gurmukh Singh in Canada Dairy. Spl: A-I bombing

When Judge Ian Josephson entered the specially erected courtroom at the British Columbia Supreme Court in Vancouver on March 16, the relatives of the victims of the Kanishka tragedy 20 years ago waited with bated breath to hear his verdict.

After a few minutes when the judge acquitted both the suspects - Ripduman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, the jampacked court in pouring rain couldn't believe his words.

It was too much for the relatives who had waited all these years to get justice. Their world had crumbled. No Canadian court had ever seen poignant scenes like these.

Later at a press conference in the court, these dejected relatives who had flown in from Toronto, Los Angeles, India, Europe and the Middle East, rightly said that it (verdict) was yet another tragedy for them.

Indeed, it was a sad spectacle to witness those poor relatives let down by the Canadian justice system.

And this sad scene was enacted yet again in Ireland on Thursday where these relatives gathered to mourn their loved ones at their memorial. That Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin joined them in their grief was no comfort to them as his Liberal party government has consistently refused to order a public inquiry into the Air India flight 182 bombing on June 23, 1985, at the height of militancy in Punjab.

In fact, his deputy Anne McLellan had said immediately after the verdict that no useful purpose would be served by a public inquiry. She said lessons had been learnt from the tragedy to prevent any such disaster in future, though her party which was in opposition at the time of the tragedy had promised to order a public inquiry into the bombing.

When the pressure mounted from the public, the media and the opposition parties, the government appointed a former New Brunswick premier to probe whether a public inquiry was really needed. Needed?

Well, if a public inquiry is ever ordered, it will certainly put the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in the dock for bungling the probe.

CSIS, which was set up just before the flight 182 bombing, had tracked British Columbia-based Sikh militants at the request of the Indian Government as it had received intelligence reports that they (militants) intended to target the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi during his visit to the US that year. CSIS had also taped the conversations of the plot mastermind Talwinder Singh Parmar with Ajaib Singh Bagri. However, these tapes were soon erased, thus destroying evidence against the two suspects. Judge Josephson slammed these agencies in his verdict for erasing the tapes.

The plot mastermind Parmar was killed in an encounter with Indian police in 1992. Only Inderjit Singh Reyat, who had a role in the assembly of the bomb that brought down the flight 182 off the Irish coast killing all 329 people on board, has been convicted for 10 years in this case.

Obviously, any public investigation will cover all aspects of the Air-India case which the legal case didn't cover (This is another matter that the RCMP still has about 15 officers working on this case. As and when any fresh evidence comes up, says the RCMP, it will take the matter to the court). Such an inquiry will expose them to liabilities and claims.

But where do the families and relatives of the victims - most of whom were Canadian citizens - go from here? Their association says they will not rest justice is done to them.

And where does this case, called Canada's 9/11 and the costliest in Canadian legal history, leave this country's justice system?

Yes, for years Indo-Canadian witnesses were not willing to come forward for fear of retaliation. Yes, Indo-Canadian Times editor Tara Singh Hayer, who was ready to depose against the two suspects, was gunned down. Yes, the Canadian agencies had a big linguistic barrier of getting information from the mostly Punjabi-speaking Indo-Canadian community. Yes, more than $130 million was spent on this case.

But the fact remains that the justice system failed the victim's families. And the fact remains that Canadian laws were very soft on terrorists till 9/11 forced Ottawa to tightened them.

In the end, two things stand out. One, Canadian agencies were not up to the task. And there is some truth to the allegations that it was never treated as a Canadian case. It was treated as India's problem. The plotters were Indians (read Indo-Canadians). The victims were Indians. The plane was Indian. And it was all about an Indian issue (Khalistan). Two, the investigation was too narrow, focusing on a few individuals.

Looks like the truth about the Kanishka plot may be never out and the kith and kin of the victims may never get justice.

Indeed, on Thursday was another very sad day for them.