Kanishka victims' relative angry over Canadian Govt.'s inquiry report

Shimla (Himachal Pradesh), June 19(ANI): After the Canadian Government released the final report of the Commission of Inquiry into the 1985 Air India Kanishka bombing, an angry relative of three victims has said that admitting the security lapses is not enough.

Nirmal Singh said that it would not compensate for the lives of his three family members, or the hundreds who died in the disaster.

"Today after 25 years, the Canadian Government had admitted that it all happened because of their mistake in accessing the situation, but just admitting the mistake is not enough," Singh said.

"It is very sad that in the attack in which 329 people, including the crew of the flight, met an unfortunate death," he added.

The bombing occurred on June 23, 1985, as the Air India flight 182 was over the Atlantic Ocean en route from Montreal to London and New Delhi.

He further said that the Canadian Government should make provisions to avoid disasters of this magnitude in future.

"They should now make it a point that in future they should make such arrangements so that no person or human loses their life like this," Singh said.

The Commission of Inquiry report has said that Canada needs a security tsar to avoid repeating the "cascading series of errors" by intelligence and police agencies that led to the bombing of Air India Flight 182.

The scathing report cited "turf wars" that prevented authorities from stopping the 1985 attack, which killed 329 people, and hamstrung efforts to catch those responsible for history's deadliest bombing of an airliner.

The commission was launched in 2006, and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper had appointed former Supreme Court Justice John Major as the commission's chairman. (ANI)