Thaindian News

Vancouver, Mar 8 (ANI): More arrests could be done in the 26-year-old Air India case after new efforts were being made to find two men who checked in bags with explosives at the Vancouver airport on June 22, 1985, according to Royal Canadian Mounted Police Deputy Commissioner Gary Bass.

The Air India plane was blown up by a bomb while in Irish airspace, at an altitude of 31,000 feet (9,400 m), and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, resulting in death of 329 people, including 280 Canadian citizens, mostly of Indian birth or descent, and 22 Indians.

The incident was the largest mass murder in modern Canadian history. The explosion and downing of the carrier occurred within an hour of the related Narita Airport Bombing.

Disappointed with the inquiry into the investigation of the Air India bombing, Bass said that the team of more than 20 officers who continue to work full-time on the notorious case will find answers to the deadliest unsolved crime in Canadian history.

Bass, who retires next week after almost 40 years in the RCMP, told The Globe and Mail about the suspects and the investigation, and added as time goes by some people who know about the plot will no longer be afraid to speak out.

“Circumstances change over time. Someone knows something but is afraid to come forward because they are afraid what another individual may do. But if that individual dies, it changes the whole complexity. These things happen over a long period of time in cases like this,” he said.

He feels that the commission failed to respond to one of the biggest hurdles that confronted prosecutors in the trial of two Air India suspects - how to convert intelligence collected by CSIS into evidence that can be used in a courtroom and still protect a confidential source.

The court placed the same onus on CSIS as on the RCMP when it decided that CSIS demonstrated unacceptable negligence by destroying wiretap tapes in the Air India case, The Globe and Mail quoted him, as saying.

Deputy Commissioner Bass was team commander of the Air India task force from 1995 to 2000 and has remained involved with the task force over the past decade as he moved up the ranks in the RCMP. (ANI)