Terrorist act, mass murder, intelligence failure – the Air India tragedy has come to mean many things to Canadians since Flight 182 was bombed out of the sky off the Irish coast nearly 25 years ago.
To the youngest relatives of the 329 people killed, Air India meant little beyond a death in the family, as they grieved and got on with their lives. But as decades passed and questions piled up, they too joined the waiting line for answers.
Answers, as well as recognition that this was a crime hatched on home soil that claimed Canadian victims, have been a long time coming. Years of criminal investigation have yielded just one conviction, for manslaughter, against a B.C. mechanic who assembled bomb components. Two other B.C. men were acquitted of murder.
More answers are expected Thursday, as Justice John Major releases his report from a long-sought federal inquiry. The probe, called in 2006, examined Canada’s response to terrorism and aviation security, and how government agencies, such as the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, share information.
Still, questions about who exactly was responsible for the Air India bombing are likely to remain long after Thursday.
Three young Canadians who lost loved ones on June 23, 1985, talk about grief, hope and growing up in the shadow of the worst terrorist act in the country’s history.
DEEPAK KHANDELWAL
Then: Age 17, of Saskatoon
Now: Age 42, of Oakville, Ont.
Lost: His sisters, Chandra, 21, and Manju, 19
Deepak Khandelwal’s fast-paced career has landed him a seat on nearly 3,000 commercial flights throughout the world in the past 15 years, dispensing advice for a top-tier business consultancy.
He attributes much of his ambition to a desire to fulfill his sisters’ lost potential. If not for his academic prowess, a trait his sisters shared, Mr. Khandelwal would have died with them en route to India for an uncle’s wedding. Their mother was already there waiting; their father, a University of Saskatchewan professor, was due to follow.
Young Mr. Khandelwal cancelled his ticket on Flight 182 to accept a summer scholarship at the University of Calgary, but within hours of arriving there, he was heading back to Saskatoon, to his grieving father.
They flew to Ireland, but found only Manju, the middle child, among the photos of distorted faces they were shown. She’d blazed through high school in two years, and at 19, was about to enter her second year at medical school. Chandra, an aspiring pharmacist, wasn’t found.
Between meetings Thursday in San Francisco, Mr. Khandelwal hopes to dig into Mr. Justice John Major’s 3,100-page inquiry online – not just for a clearer picture of how Canada failed to stop the bombing, but for ways to prevent such failures in the future.
“I just don’t want anyone to go through this, ever again,” he said. “No one should have to be 17 and go through this.”
With the inquiry report, he hopes Canada can reclaim the potential it too seemed to lose: to ensure full and timely justice for all citizens.
“I hope it never does occur,” he said, “but if anything like this occurs again, you can only be hopeful that Canada deals with it in a much better way than it did 25 years ago.”
Update: Here is Mr. Khandelwal reaction to the inquiry's report.
How do you feel now that the inquiry’s final report has been released? Does it provide you a measure of closure?
