After 18 tardy years, the 'Kanishka
case' went to trial this April. Held in a $7.2 million
high-security courtroom built specially for the trial, it is considered
the costliest and most complex court proceedings ever held in Canada.
Investigations into the bombing of the Air-India flight had been
hampered by the reluctance of witnesses to testify. But in early
November, the testimony of a woman, whose identity cannot be revealed
under a court order, seems to have brought a twist to the tale.
On June 23, 1985, the ill-fated Toronto-Delhi Air-India Flight 182
plunged into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Ireland after a mid-air
explosion. All 329 persons on board were reduced to cold statistics. The
blast was allegedly the handiwork of Canada-based Sikh extremists to
further their demand for a state of Khalistan and to avenge the 1984
Operation Blue Star in the Golden Temple, Amritsar. Canada's British
Columbia, with its huge Sikh population, was the Khalistan movement's
nucleus outside India.
 The
main accused in the case, Vancouver-based businessman Ripudaman Singh
Malik and a sawmill worker Ajay Singh Bagri, were charged on eight
counts-including first-degree murder and criminal conspiracy. They have
been in judicial custody since their arrest in October 2000. Two others,
Inderjit Singh Reyat and Talwinder Singh Parmar, were declared
co-conspirators.
Reyat, an electrician from Vancouver Island, pleaded guilty to
manslaughter in February this year and was sentenced to five years in
jail. He had admitted to buying materials for the bomb, but denied
having any knowledge of the conspiracy. Reyat had served 10 years for
his role in the Narita blast-a suitcase bomb exploded at Japan's Narita
Airport-the same day of the Kanishka blast, leaving two baggage handlers
dead.
The unnamed woman's testimony links the main accused, Malik, to the
Kanishka blast. She said that Malik had confessed to her about his role
in the bombing and told her the names of other conspirators. Malik had
also told her that he was giving Reyat's wife $1,300 every month that
Reyat was in prison, for his service to Sikhism.
The woman had worked for five years in a day school run by Malik and was
said to have had close ties with him which ended in November 1997, when
Malik accused her of spying on him. Ever since, she has received death
threats and is under a witness protection programme. But her security
was threatened when two Vancouver publications violated the ban and
printed her name after her testimony. An American Web site also followed
suit but pulled out the item later.
As the case winds its way, the court's release of classified documents
reveal bungling by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian
Security Intelligence Service, and lack of information sharing between
them.
Parmar, who was suspected of plotting attacks against Indian targets,
was under surveillance by the CSIS much before the explosion and his
phone was being tapped three months before it. The RCMP, however, had no
clue. On June 4, 1985, CSIS agents followed Parmar, Reyat and an
unidentified person into the woods outside Duncan, where they heard a
loud explosion believed to be of a high-calibre handgun. The RCMP
received this information but did nothing.
"Certainly we can, with the benefit of hindsight, say that if we had
immediately interviewed Parmar and Reyat after the incident, we might
have deterred the subsequent presumed bombing of Flight 182. But then,
the RCMP had this option too and chose not to pursue it," said the CSIS
director-general, in a 1986 memo. The CSIS allowed the RCMP access to
the recordings of Parmar's phone calls only three months after the
explosion. By then, they had erased many tapes.
Families of victims were upset that Reyat provided little information in
his testimony. "Even though photographs show him with the accused, he
claims to know nothing," says Kalyan Harpalani whose wife and daughters
were onboard Kanishka.
The murder of a key witness, Vancouver-based newspaper pub-lisher Tara
Singh Hayer in November 1998, was another setback. Hayer, a vocal critic
of Sikh extremists, had told the RCMP that sawmill worker Bagri had
confessed to his role when the duo met a London-based publisher, Tarsem
Singh Purewal, in London. Purewal was subsequently murdered.
In the intervening years, the surviving members have picked up the
threads of their lives and moved on. "The anger has subsided but there
is pain, frustration and helplessness," says Bal Gupta, who lost his
wife, Ramwati. He believes that Canada was "just not geared" to
investigate such a criminal act. The possibility that the tragedy could
have been averted haunts Harpalani. "There was negligence by everyone,
Air-India, the RCMP and the CSIS," he says.
"When the trial comes to an end," Gupta says, "a chapter will end, but
the book will never close. It will close when we go."
The dance of life
By Kavita Bajeli-Datt
 Lata
Pada was awaiting the arrival of her husband, geologist Vishnu,
and teenage daughters, Brinda and Aarti, from Canada on that fateful
day of June 23, 1985 when news of the crash in Cork reached her.
She couldn't believe it. Frantic calls later, the news was
confirmed. She flew to Ireland and identified the mangled bodies of
her daughters.
Solo rise: Lata in a striking
pose
"I couldn't find my husband's body," recalled Pada 18 years later
when I met her in Delhi where she staged a multi-media presentation,
Revealed By Fire, based on her tragedy. "I had nightmares for days.
I saw him coming back. It ended when I found his body." After the
cremation in Ireland, she returned to Canada and sold her house and
belongings. "I was lost. I went into denial," she said.
After her marriage in 1964, Pada had settled in Canada, rearing a
family and keeping in touch with Bharatanatyam. She used to visit
India for performances and was, in fact, in Mumbai when disaster
struck.
It took her three months after the tragedy to return to dance.
"Dance exhausted me enough so that at the end of the day I had no
energy left to think. It also changed me spiritually," she said.
Then, in 1990, she set up the Sampradaya Dance Academy and a dance
company in Canada.
Pada, now 56, is a performer, choreographer, teacher and researcher,
and the subject of several documentaries. She has trained 1,500
students in 13 years and performed more than 600 shows around the
world.
When Revealed by Fire was first staged in Canada in 2001, she was
inundated with congratulatory calls and letters. The families of
Kanishka victims who saw the show were moved to tears. "I rose from
the ashes. It took a lot of courage for me to tell my story. Through
Revealed By Fire I wanted to speak about the universal experience of
loss and survival," said Pada.
Today, Pada's one wish is that the trial ends soon. "The lengthy
trial has opened old wounds. We wish it ends well," she said. |
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