1985 Air India Bombing: Shocking Revelations

The inquiry into the June 23, 1985 bombing of Air India flight 182 which killed 329 people off the Irish coast, mostly Canadians of Indian descent, resumed on April 30 in Ottawa, with questions of a key former Vancouver police officer whose transcribed interviews with police informants revealed the plot to bomb an Air India flight out of Montreal months before it happened.

In a dramatic testimony sometimes from behind curtains, witnesses testified recently that Canadian authorities had been informed about the plot to bomb an Air India plane. A key suspect in the bombing who was not of India descent (referred as person 1) and that a police informer of Indian descent (person 2) had provided Vancouver police and the RCMP with quite specific details about the plot to target an Air India flight in Oct'1984. Person 1 said he was promised payment of $200,000 to carry out the bomb plot, and also to assassinate then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi. Extract from the transcript of the tape published in Candian newspapers tells of the chilling account of the events that preceded before the bombing.

In another stunning revelation, a former Quebec provincial police officer today said that the Air India bombing could have been prevented, if only he was given the chance to search the flight's baggage by sniffer dogs before it left Montreal's Mirabel Airport.

Serge Carignan told a public enquiry yesterday that he got a phone call at his home from his Surete Du Quebec supervisor, the night of June 22, 1985 the Saturday of the St. Jean Baptiste holiday and was told that the RCMP needed him and his dog Arko to fill in for their own absent canine team in search of a jumbo jet and its luggage. By the time he and his sniffer dog Arko arrived at Mirabel, the plane had already departed and his only task was to search three suspicious suitcases that had been pulled off and left behind which turned out to be harmless.

But Carignan said he was sure that, if he had been able to search the rest of the luggage and the plane itself, he could have averted the tragedy that took 329 lives.