book review

Air India Tragedy: Loss of Faith in Canadian Justice System

Kim Bolan is a gusty reporter with the influential daily, Vancouver Sun since 1984 covering minority, women’s education and social services. She won Courage in Journalism Award in 1999 for her continuing coverage of the Air-India story while facing death threats. She has courageously followed the story behind the crash of the Air India plane since 1985. Unmindful of the consequences, this highly committed journalist visited Punjab to understand the tragedy and the reasons behind the terrorists, causing loss of 329 innocent lives. She has reported extensively on the Air India trial and there is her book, loss of Faith telling as complete story as possible.

A sensitive journalist from Vancouver, Gurpreet Singh brings the book alive with this review.

On June 23, 1985, Canada was struck by international terrorism when two bombs built in B.C. detonated within an hour of each other on opposite sides of the world, killing 329 innocent men, women, and children.

Canadian Sikh separatists, upset at the Indian government for attacking the Golden Temple, were immediately suspected by the RCMP for perpetrating the worst act of aviation terrorism before Sept. 11, 2001.  As police scrambled to get into the immigrant community and collect evidence against the suspects, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service got busy in destroying taped telephone calls between the same people the RCMP was investigating.

 All those at the centre of the terrorist plot tried to guard their dark secret. Two Sikh newspaper publishers who reportedly overheard an alleged confession by one of the bombers were assassinated. Other possible witnesses were threatened as journalists were targeted by death threats and harassed.

While everyone is looking for answers to the questions that the Air India trial has left, the Vancouver Sun reporter Kim Bolan’s book Loss of Faith goes into the depth of the worst terrorist crime in the Canadian history.

The book suggests how the Canadian police, the intelligence and the politicians had conveniently ignored the signals about the impending terrorist incident that left 329 passengers aboard Air India Flight 182 dead in 1985. Not only the Canadian authorities failed to prevent the bombing, they took 15 years to charge the suspects. 

Kim Bolan has pulled no punches in her book while attacking the Canadian politicians, who lacked will to check the growing threat of Sikh separatists. She writes how the politicians continue to rub shoulders with the influential separatist leaders. Though the Sikh terrorist group Babbar Khalsa engineered the Air India bombing, the Canada government took years to put it on its watch-list and allowed it to grow in the name of human rights.

The book reveals that despite having tips, the intelligence and the police failed to prevent the suspects from going ahead with their plans. They couldn’t even differentiate between the suspects, who wore similar traditional dresses and looked alike to the western eyes. 

The two suspects - Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik were charged after 15 years. The Canadian police also failed to prevent Talwinder Singh Parmar, the mastermind behind these bombings from leaving the country. He died in a staged police encounter in India.   

The BC Supreme Court Judge acquitted Bagri and Malik on the ground that the crown witnesses lacked credibility and sentenced the bomb maker Inderjit Singh Reyat for merely five years. The book says that the judge did not take into account the threat to the lives of the witnesses. Among them was the Punjabi publisher Tara Singh Hayer, who was assassinated before the trial began. He had given a statement to the police implicating Bagri as suspect. The author reveals startling facts about the relationship between the suspects and the gangsters to support her argument.

Kim has somehow fallen in love with the Air India story. Her compassion towards the victims’ families is understandable but the judicial trial is different from a media trial, which had speculated conviction of Malik and Bagri.

The author appears to have soft corner for Hayer. While his murder cannot be justified, he earlier supported Sikh extremists but later fell apart with them. The author describes Hayer as the 332nd victim of the Air India episode, whereas he had justified violence in his writings in the years leading to the bombing.  Later, he changed his mind and was a staunch opponent of the extremist politics.

Kim has not gone into the causes behind Sikh terrorism. It had its roots in the genuine political demands of the moderate Sikh leaders of Punjab. The Indian establishment had turned a blind eye to these demands giving an opportunity to the violent separatists to hijack the peaceful movement. 

However, she passionately writes about the murder of Parmar in a fake encounter with no collateral damage to the Indian police. This suggests that Kim isn’t an anti Sikh, the allegation often made by religious fanatics. Her book leaves no doubt in reader’s mind that only an independent public inquiry can bring a closure to the victims’ families, who haven’t got justice. The federal government has finally ordered a focused inquiry recommended by Bob Rae who was appointed adviser to find if at all such inquiry is needed. The government has acted wisely by asking him to head the inquiry, as Bob Rae is familiar with the facts related to the Air India bombing.

Meanwhile, Malik has asked the BC government to compensate him for wrongful confinement. The BC Attorney General, Wally Oppal has confirmed that Malik has sent a letter seeking compensation. The legal branch says that Malik’s claim has no merit. Rather, the BC Government has asked both Malik and Bagri to pay back the money spent on their defence. It is pertinent to mention that the BC Government had paid $ 16.2 millions to the defence teams of these men.

Interestingly, Malik despite being a millionaire had claimed that he has no money for self-defence. Even his family had claimed that they couldn’t pay for his defence. Subsequently, Malik was given loan against the security on the mortgages of Malik’s properties.

Despite his acquittal, the controversy about Malik’s association with terrorism refuses to die. Recently, he was booted out of the Khalsa Credit Union because of his ties with the now banned terrorist group Babbar Khalsa.

Loss of Faith is a book about  who was involved, what precipitated the attack, how the author was involved herself in the story, and what has since happened since that terrorist attack of 23 June 1985 on that rancorous road for justice-a journey that's as  yet, far from over. Published by McClelland and Stewart, the book is priced $36.99 CDN.