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2 Soon after the Narita and Flight 182 bombings 3 The trial today 4 See Also 5 External Links |
The bomb brothers
On June 22, 1985, at 1330 Greenwich Mean Time, a man named Mr. Singh calls Canadian Pacific Airlines reservations to book a flight from Vancouver International Airport in Vancouver, British Columbia to Toronto, Ontario. He wants his suitcase transferred to Flight 182. The agents, who had booked him as unconfirmed, first refuse to interline the baggage, but they later relent.
At 1550 GMT, Mr. Singh checked into Vancouver for CP Air Flight 60 to Toronto. An agent named Jeannie Adams checked in a piece of luggage bound for the Air India flight.
At 1618, the CP Air flight to Toronto departed without Mr. Singh.
It is unknown when a man named L. Singh checked in Vancouver into CP Air Flight 3 to New Tokyo International Airport in Narita, Japan, near Tokyo. Jeannie Adams also checked in his bag. His bag was directed to Air India Flight 301, which flew from Narita to Don Muang International Airport in Bangkok, Thailand. L. Singh is assigned seat 38H.
At 2022 GMT, CP Air Flight 60 arrived in Toronto 12 minutes late. Some of the passengers and baggage, including the bag Mr. Singh checked in, are transferred to the Air India flight. Other passengers and baggage come from Air Canada Flight 136, which also came from Vancouver.
At 2037 GMT, Empress of Australia, flying CP Flight 3 departed Vancouver without L. Singh on board.
At 0015 GMT on June 23, 1985, Air India Flight 182 departed Toronto for Montreal Mirabel 1 Hour and 40 Minutes late. The aircraft was late as a "5th pod", or a spare engine was installed below the left wing. The defective engine was being flown with Flight 182 to India for repairs.
Air India Flight 182 arrived at Mirabel at 0100 GMT.
At 0541, Empress of Australia, flying route CP Air 3 arrived at Tokyo 14 minutes early. The luggage that came from CP Air 3 exploded as it was being transferred to Air India Flight 301, killing two of the baggage handlers in Narita and injuring four other people.
At 715 GMT, Air India Flight 182, which had departed Mirabel bound for London, disappeared. Air traffic controllers at Shannon International Airport in Shannon, Ireland heard a cackling sound before the plane vanished.
The second piece of baggage, a dark-brown, hard sided Samsonite suitcase wound up on Flight 182 and came with it when it departed Toronto. The bomb inside detonated in the forward cargo hold, 55 minutes after the Narita bomb went off, at 715 GMT. VT-EFO, nicknamed Kanishka, a Boeing 747-237B on the route was blown up mid-flight in a terrorist attack led by Sikh nationalists at flight level FL310. The plane was supposed to arrive at 815 GMT.
The bomb caused a rapid decompression, followed by an in-flight breakup. The plane crashed in 2,000 meter deep ocean in the south-west Irish coast 180 miles offshore of Cork, Ireland.
The bombing killed 307 passengers and 19 flight attendents. The bombing and was the largest terrorist attack ever committed against Canadian citizens. 82 of the dead were minors. 280 of the dead were Canadians. Some of the dead had survived the explosion and the fall from 31,000 feet but drowned in the Atlantic Ocean.
Air India Flight 301 left Narita at 805 GMT and arrived in Thailand unscathed.
Soon after the Narita and Flight 182 bombings
The subsequent Canadian investigation into the attack was notoriously slow, and was dogged by many charges of corruption and incompetence. Only in 2002 did the trial formally begin, and as of this writing is still ongoing.
The main suspect in the bombing was exiled Sihk nationalist leader Talwinder Singh Parmar who had allegedly plotted the attack while living in the Canadian province of British Columbia. He had been under longtime survielance of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police due to suspicious activities.
In 1992, Parmer was killed by police in Punjab, India, and was never formally brought to trial for his role in the 329 deaths.
The trial today
The trial is now currently focusing around Inderjit Singh Reyat who was the alleged bomb-maker of the device that blew up flight 182. In 2003 he pled guilty to the murder of the 329 passengers.