March 22, 2005
CTV
A former Indian spy says he warned Canada about threats
to India's national airlines just two months before the
Air India bombing, The Globe and Mail reports.
In a new book about his time in the Indian Intelligence
Agency, Maloy Krishna Dhar says the warnings were based
on his undercover activities inside British Columbia's Sikh
community.
The report comes amid increasing calls for the federal
government to hold a public inquiry into the 1985 bombing
of Flight 182, which killed 329 people.
Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh has said it is too early
to know if an inquiry will be called. However, Deputy Prime
Minister Anne McLellan has outright rejected such calls.
On Monday, former cabinet minister Herb Dhaliwal said McLellan's
offer to meet with the families for a briefing instead of
holding an inquiry is "absolutely not" enough.
Calls for a probe into the Air India disaster intensified
last week, when Ripudiman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri
were found not guilty of all charges against them in the
case.
The only person to ever be convicted in the case is Inderjit
Singh Reyat, who admitted to supplying the parts for the
bomb that brought down Flight 182. He was sentenced to five
years in prison.
Investigators allege the deadly Air India plot had been
hatched by Talwinder Singh Parmar, the B.C.-based founder
of the Sikh militant group Babbar Khalsa. He was reported
killed in a shootout with Indian police in October 1992.
According to the report in The Globe, Dhar says in his
book -- Open Secrets, India's Intelligence Unveiled -- that
"discreet probes" in circles close to Parmar and
others raised suspicions of a threat to sabotage a civilian
Indian aircraft.
He said that the information was given to the High Commissioner
in India, who says they passed it on to Canada. Canada did
not react to the warning, the book says.
"It appears to us that the security experts in Canada
were still not motivated enough by their political masters
to swoop down on the Sikh militants," Dhar states.
Dhar also alleges that Parmar was under the patronage of
Pakistan's intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence,
in 1981.
