Posters of a pro-Khalistan rally extolling the mastermind of the 1985 Air India bombing were displayed at multiple locations in Canada. They referred to Talwinder Singh Parmar as a martyr and advertised a car rally, scheduled for June 25. Furthermore, they also sought an investigation into “India’s role in the 1985 Kanishka bombing.”
According to the poster, the car rally will be held on June 25, which will start at 12.30 PM at The Great Punjab Business Centre at Malton in Toronto, and will end at Air India 182 Memorial at Humber Bay Park West in the same city. It further demands, “Investigate India’s role in 1986 Kanishka bombing,” a terror attack carried out by the Khalistani terror group Babbar Khalsa.
Retired Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) correspondent and author of ‘Blood for Blood – Fifty Years of the Global Khalistan Project’ also posted about the same on Twitter and denounced the Khalistanis. He wrote, “Ensuring that their reputation stays at rock-bottom, Canadian Khalistanis again pick as their poster boy the psychopath who bombed Air India, Talwinder Parmar. He murdered 331 innocents for nothing. And a grotesque twist, he’ll be honoured at the memorial to his victims.”
Ensuring that their reputation stays at rock-bottom, Canadian Khalistanis again pick as their poster boy the psychopath who bombed Air India, Talwinder Parmar. He murdered 331 innocents for nothing. And – a grotesque twist – he'll be honoured at the memorial to his victims. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/7feI5UDCQb
— Terry Milewski (@CBCTerry) June 17, 2023
He observed that the demand that Canada “investigate India’s role” in the attack was just another absurd attempt to defend the country’s “worst mass murderer” and remarked that “the rally is about spreading a lie.”
It's another mad bid to whitewash Canada's worst-ever mass-murderer by demanding that Canada "investigate India's role" in the bombing. But decades of investigations proved that India had no such role and that Parmar led the bomb plot. The rally is about spreading a lie. 2/2
— Terry Milewski (@CBCTerry) June 17, 2023
On June 23, 1985, Air India Flight 182, which was travelling from Toronto to London with 329 passengers and crew, was blown in mid-air off the coast of Ireland. All of the lives on board were lost as a result of the blast. Sikh radicals were reportedly charged with the derailment of the flight, and one person was found guilty in 2003.
Three suspicious items were found by Canadian officials in Montreal during a routine stop, which set off a chain of events. Afterwards, the goods were taken off of the plane before it proceeded to London. However, the aircraft exploded while it was airborne, about 45 minutes short of its intended destination without any warning or distress calls being attempted.
Emergency rescue teams were dispatched to the spot as soon as the plane vanished from radar screens, but no survivors were discovered. Later, 131 bodies were pulled from the sea by the former.
Officials at the airline initially believed that Sikh extremists had detonated a bomb on the Air India flight. Two months after the fatal occurrence, two accused were eventually arrested. Talwinder Singh Parmar was accused by Canadian police of orchestrating the attack. He was charged, but the case was later withdrawn. He was killed by the Indian police.
Inderjit Singh Reyat, the other culprit and a Sikh living in Vancouver, pled guilty to manslaughter in relation to the bombing. He received a five-year prison term in 2003. Notably, he had already been given a 10-year prison sentence for his part in the bombing of two baggage handlers at Japan’s Narita Airport on the same day as the Air India Flight 182 tragedy.
Although Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, two further suspects, were apprehended in 2000, they were exonerated in 2005 owing to insufficient evidence. A Canadian commission was constituted in 2006 to look into the instance. The accident was caused by a “cascading series of errors,” according to the commission’s five-volume report, which was published in 2010.
It emphasised precisely how Canadian intelligence and security organisations engaged in “turf wars” and failed to exchange critical information with one another which resulted in the demise of so many innocents.
33 years after the horrific assault, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paid respect to the 329 victims and called the atrocity the “single worst terrorist attack” in the history of his nation.
Pro-Khalistan actions have been concentrated in Canada, and they have accelerated recently. A strict warning was issued to Canada by Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar after Khalistan supporters recently celebrated the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi at the hands of her two Sikh bodyguards Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, in Brampton. He warned that such events would be detrimental to bilateral relations.
Sikh separatists have regularly vandalised and desecrated temples, particularly in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom as well as attacked and damaged Indian High Commissions there which earned very strong responses from the Indian government.
