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Revision as of 07:41, 20 December 2003 by WhisperToMe (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Air India Flight 182 was a flight that flew on a Lester B. Pearson International Airport, Mississauga, Ontario - Dorval International Airport, Montreal, Quebec - London Heathrow Airport, London - Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi - Sahar International Airport (now Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport), Bombay (now Mumbai) route
On June 22, 1985, two pieces of baggage were checked in at Vancouver International Airport in Vancouver, British Columbia. One of the pieces of luggage arrived at New Tokyo International Airport in Narita. The luggage exploded as it was being transferred to an Air India flight, killing two of the baggage handlers in Narita.
The second piece of baggage, a dark-brown, hard sided Samsonite suitcase wound up on Flight 182. It detonated in the forward cargo hold, 55 minutes after the Narita bomb went off, at 715 GMT. The Boeing 747 on the route was blown-up mid-flight in a terrorist attack led by Sikh nationalists. The bomb went off as the aircraft was over the south-west Irish coast 180 miles offshore of Cork, Ireland.
It killed 329 passengers, mostly Canadians, and was the largest terrorist attack ever committed against Canadian citizens. Some of the dead had survived the explosion and the fall from 31,000 feet but drowned in the Atlantic Ocean.
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 Parmer 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 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.