How Canada bungled in A-I case

CSIS documents have revealed the intelligence agency bungled in Kanishka bombing case.

Even as the final arguments in the trial of Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripduman Singh Malik in the Air India case end this week, it has been revealed that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) bungled in the case at various stages.

Quoting from a 19-year-old secret CSIS documents, the Globe and Mail newspaper (which obtained these after legal action) has revealed how the CSIS failed to keep track of the main accused Talwinder Singh Parmar who allegedly masterminded the bombings which killed 331 people in June 23, 1985.

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The intelligence surveillance against Parmar was mounted even before the Air India bombing took place. The CSIS suspected that he was plotting to kill the then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

"The surveillance was conducted to ascertain the associates, contacts, movements and activities of Parmar and obtain photos of Parmar and all those he was in contact with,'' the secret documents say.

Parmar came under the intelligence scanner 39 times between April 6, 1985, and June 23, 1985 (the day of the Air India blasts).

The newspaper quotes the surveillance documents to show how Parmar slipped away while the agents were following him just before the Air India disaster. It also reveals how the agents were caught by Parmar's neighbours who reported their activities to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. And how the agents assigned to keep an eye on Parmar were shifted to other targets just before the bombs were loaded on to the aircraft.

A few days before the Air India disaster, the agents spotted Parmar "leave his house with an unidentified woman, go to another home, go shopping, drive to a farmhouse outside Vancouver and head west along the Trans-Canada Highway." The agents simply abandoned the chase after some time, the report says.

Surveillance documents also give accounts that played a prominent role in the on-going Air India trial, including the surveillance of a test blast of a homemade bomb on June 4, 1985; an alleged meeting of conspirators on June 18, 1985, at Parmar's house and the arrival of Bagri outside Parmar's house.

"Surprisingly, after Ajaib Singh Bagri's arrival, the CSIS discontinued surveillance of Parmar's house,'' says the newspaper reports, quoting the secret documents.

Despite such high-profile evidence and allegations, Parmar was never charged in the Air India case, the newspaper alleges. He was killed in India in an encounter with Punjab Police in 1992.

The CSIS also bungled when it erased the tapes of Parmar's phone calls before and after the Air India bombing.

This has been used by defence lawyer Michal Code who argues that Bagri could have proved his innocence if these erased tapes were available. Today, he pleaded with the trial judge to consider remedies to correct prejudice suffered by his client.

The prosecution case against the two accused rests on the testimony of two persons. One is a former female friend of Bagri who confided to the secret service that Bagri had visited her the night before the bombing and wanted to borrow her car to carry bombs to the airport, thinking that intelligence agencies won't suspect her.

The other witness, named only John, testified that Bagri had told him about the Air India conspiracy during a chat at a New Jersey gas station.

Justice Ian Bruce Josephson, the sole trial judge, will announce his verdict early next year.

In the worst disaster in aviation history, 329 passengers were killed when a bomb went off on the India Air flight to Delhi off the Irish coast on June 23, 1985. An hour earlier, a blast had killed two handlers at Tokyo's Narita airport when they were loading baggage on to an Air India plane.