Search the Internet           Tips

RCMP launch hunt for third suspect in Kanishka bombing

Canadian authorities have launched an international manhunt for a third suspect in the 1985 bombing of Air-India's jumbo jet Kanishka and will seek help from Pakistan, where the suspect is believed to have fled, according to The Province newspaper of Vancouver.

The paper also said on Sunday that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were preparing to charge "several others in the next few days" in connection with the bombing which killed 329 people, most of them Canadian.

Two Sikh men -- Ripudaman Singh Malik, 53, and Ajaib Singh Bagri, 51 -- were arrested on Friday and charged on eight counts, including first-degree murder, in the June 23, 1985, explosion off the coast of Ireland and an explosion at Tokyo's Narita airport the same day.

RCMP Air-India Task Force spokeswoman Cate Galliford would not confirm the report, saying: "We are not going to be disclosing where we are looking for the other suspects."

She also refused to say whether the RCMP had contacted Pakistani officials.

But Constable Galliford repeated an earlier statement, saying, "We anticipate more arrests."

The newspaper said the third suspect's disappearance from his Burnaby, British Columbia, home prompted the RCMP to first delay arresting two other suspects, hoping he would return. But they moved in and arrested the two Sikhs on Friday when another appeared likely to flee.

Constable Galliford denied this, saying police "had in mind for quite a few months October 27". She said the 20-member Air-India Task Force brought in 40 additional officers in preparation for the arrests.

On Friday, the RCMP named two others, Talwinder Singh Parmar and Inderjit Singh Reyat, as unindicted co-conspirators in the Air-India bombing and the Narita explosion.

Reyat is serving a ten-year prison sentence in Canada for manufacturing the bomb that exploded in Tokyo, killing two porters, while Parmar, a Sikh terrorist who had lived in Vancouver, was killed by Indian forces in 1992.

The Province report said the missing suspect, who was spotted in Britain several weeks ago, was Parmar's close associate in the l980s.

"He was last seen in England," a Sikh source told the newspaper. "He visits Birmingham frequently, but now it is suspected that he has gone to Pakistan. My feeling is he is not going to come back."

The Province said Canada would ask Pakistan's military rulers this week to help track down and return the man, who is suspected of helping to obtain tickets for two passengers who failed to board a Canadian Pacific flight in Vancouver.

That flight landed in Toronto, where luggage -- including the suspected bomb package -- for onward passengers was transferred to Air-India's Flight 182, which was en route to New Delhi and Bombay. The bomb went off when the plane was over the Atlantic near Ireland.

The third suspect was first arrested in November 1985 by the RCMP's Air-India Task Force, but was released for lack of evidence, the paper said.

Tell us what you think of this report