Air India families demanding justice
Ram and Sudha Jalan were visiting Vancouver from Bangalore, India on Friday when they read a Postmedia News article about the Air India memorial service at Stanley Park.
Ram lost his brother, his sister-inlaw and their two children in the June 23, 1985 terrorist bombing.
“This just happened to be a coincidence,” Ram said just before the evening service began. “I wouldn’t have known about this memorial if I hadn’t read the newspaper.”
The Jalans touched the sandstone memorial wall near Second Beach that bears the names of their lost loved ones — Krishan, Shila, Anita and Vinay, who lived in Toronto.
They met others whose family members died when Air India Flight 182 was blown up off the coast of Ireland by a made-in-B. C. bomb.
Ram said it was difficult because “these are bad memories.”
Former B.C. Premier Ujjal Dosanjh greeted the Jalans on behalf of the people of the province and the country.
And he scolded politicians and the RCMP for not doing more to bring justice to the 331 people who lost their lives on the Air India flight and in the same-day bomb blast at Tokyo’s Narita Airport that killed two baggage handlers.
Police “should get off their backsides and conduct an investigation aggressively to ensure there is finally justice with respect to the victims’ families,” Dosanjh said.
“This was the largest aviation terror attack in the history of the world when it happened. And we didn’t give it the attention and the concern that it actually deserved from … the governments of Canada.”
Dosanjh said that federal political parties of varying stripes have maintained connections to “the forces that actually brought down Air India.
“The ideological descendants and successors of those forces sit in the highest positions in all of the political parties today,” he said. “And politicians need to stand up and take notice that we are watching and that they should be careful.”
Several politicians and former politicians joined the gathering of about 50 people. Former Liberal MLA Dave Hayer, whose journalist father Tara was assassinated after helping police with the Air India probe, said justice must finally be done, despite the acquittal of two Sikh separatists in 2005. A third man pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
“In this case, the bomb makers live in British Columbia. The bomb was made here. The plan was made here and only one person has been convicted, who spent some time in the jail. The rest of the people have walked free,” Hayer said.
“Families are only asking for fairness. They are not asking for special treatment.”