Air India families request urgent meeting with Canada's public safety minister

The families of some Air India bombing victims have requested an urgent meeting with Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree after learning that the RCMP has no more leads to pursue in Canada’s deadliest terrorist attack.

Relatives of the 329 people who died on June 23, 1985, when a bomb destroyed Air India Flight 182 off the coast of Ireland were summoned by the RCMP to a Sept. 12 meeting in Toronto, where they were told the investigation was now inactive.

Several family members later told Postmedia they were devastated by the news that the RCMP had given up investigating the unprecedented terrorist attack which was plotted and hatched by B.C. suspects connected to the Babbar Khalsa group demanding an independent state in India’s Punjab region.

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Toronto resident Sudha Berry, who lost her 16-year-old brother Sharad in the bombing, sent a letter to Anandasangaree’s office on Tuesday requesting the meeting.

She noted that the minister had issued a statement to some media saying the investigation remained open, despite the RCMP saying it’s now inactive with no suspects to pursue.

“You must be aware that new leads will not magically appear without active effort from the RCMP and other law enforcement authorities,” Berry said in her letter. “The stance you have taken is illogical and unacceptable to the families. How can the minister for public safety allow the criminals behind the largest terrorist act in Canadian history to go unpunished and for the families to go without justice?”

She said the families want more information on “the nature of scrutiny and oversight your office has had over the investigation over the years.”

And they want to know the minister’s “plan for reinvigorating the investigation on an urgent basis.”

Air India Flight 182, travelling from Canada to India via London, was downed off the coast of Ireland when a B.C.-made suitcase bomb exploded, killing everyone on board. A second B.C.-made bomb, destined for another Air India flight, blew up at Tokyo’s Narita Airport the same day, killing two baggage handlers.

Two B.C. men linked to the Babbar Khalsa — a designated terrorist group — were charged in 2000, but acquitted in 2005. A third suspect, Inderjit Singh Reyat, was convicted of manslaughter in both bombings and is now out of prison.

A subsequent judicial inquiry exposed investigative and intelligence failures by the RCMP and CSIS both before and after the bombings. And several other suspects, some living and some who have since died, were identified at both the trial and inquiry though were never charged.

Berry’s letter also said she had expected more from Anandasangaree, who flew to Ireland this year and last to attend the annual memorial service near where flight 182 crashed.