On June 22nd, 1985, Air India flight 182 departed from Toronto in Canada, bound for New Delhi in India with 329 passengers on board. Most of the passengers were women and children - Indian families going home to see their relatives. They never arrived.
A bomb on board was primed to explode on the runway at Heathrow during a refuelling stop. However, there was a delay of over two hours before take-off. Flight 182 was blown out of the sky about 31,000 feet above the Atlantic, 100 miles west-southwest of the Kerry coast.
Last month, after an extensive investigation, two men were arrested and charged with the crime, and a third suspected Sikh militant was also detained. British Columbia is home to about half of Canada's 200,000 Sikhs, and Canadian investigators long believed the bomb was planted in revenge for India's 1984 raid on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the seat of faith for the Indian Sikh minority.
Fifteen years later, memories of the minutes, hours and weeks after the terrible event stay with the Indo-Canadians families whose first visit to Ireland was to identify the remains of loved ones - last seen in the departure terminal in Toronto. Many return regularly to the memorial sundial which was erected after the crash at Ahakista in west Cork. In a sense, it has become as sacred to them as Amritsar is to others back in India.
It is a tranquil place overlooking the Atlantic and one which has helped to heal deep wounds. "Ahakista holds a special place in the psyche of the relatives, and the people of the west Cork community have honoured the responsibility entrusted to them," says Hugh Farley. He is director of a new television documentary on the tragedy which is due to be broadcast as part of RTE's True Lives series on Tuesday. .
Although several documentaries have already been made on the subject, this one takes a different approach, according to Farley, who was living in the US when the aircraft was brought down. He is best-known for a trilogy of television programmes made on Northern Ireland, one of which - We Shall Overcome , with Nick Ross of BBC's Crimewatch - won a Celtic Film Festival award two years ago, for best documentary.
"This project came about as a result of a trip to west Cork by Linda Cullen, director of Coco Television. She was driving through Ahakista and happened upon the memorial site. She witnessed over 100 people of IndoCanadian and Irish nationality participating in a ceremony and it really struck her."
The bonds formed between the bereaved, the local community on the nearest land point, and those involved in the recovery effort, are explored in the programme, which moves from the control tower at Shannon airport to Toronto in Canada, then back again to Cork and to Ahakista. "There is no voice-over," says Farley. "We just wanted people to tell their own stories."
Stories such as that of Mick Quinn, procedural air traffic controller on duty on the day, who recalls how he returned to the high level tower from his breakfast on the morning of June 23rd, and sat down to a "rather busy board". Four aircraft had entered Irish air space at around about the same time, and had called up the tower.
He gave them codes and airways clearance. Subsequently, three of the aircraft appeared on radar. He told Michael O'Hehir, his supervisor, that a fourth aircraft had disappeared from the screen. It was just eight minutes after the aircraft had reported to be "on course, all normal".
Nursing sister, Sheila Wall, and Dr Michael Molloy were on duty in Cork University Hospital that morning. They were to become vital links in the chain of rescue services scrambled after the Marine Rescue Co-Ordination Centre (MRCC), then at Shannon, was alerted. MRCC informed the Naval Base at Haulbowline, and the LE Aisling, under Lieut Cdr Jim Robinson (now Cdr Robinson) intercepted the emergency messaged being relayed to Valentia Coast Radio Station.
As maritime historian Tom MacGinty recalls in The Irish Navy , the LE Aisling had just detained a British-registered Spanish fishing vessel and was 46 miles from the Air India flight's last reported position. With assistance from the RAF, the British Navy, the Air Corps and the American Air Force, the LE Aisling and 19 ships searched a four-and-a-half mile sea area for remains.
It was a harrowing and hazardous experience, as sharks began circling the navy ship's inflatable Gemini. Bodies were winched on to RAF Sea King helicopters and taken on board the naval patrol ship, which was relieved on scene by the LE Emer . "None of Aisling's crew escaped the trauma," McGinty notes.
Petty Officer Muiris (Mossy) Mahon is interviewed for the programme; he was awarded a Distinguished Service Medal, along with Cdr Robinson, Leading Seaman John McGrath and Able Seaman Terence J Brown.
Indian families back in Canada, including Bal Gupta, whose wife was on the flight, and the Turlapatis, a couple who lost two sons, describe the early morning phone calls. They first heard of the crash on news broadcasts. Prof Cuimin Doyle, pathologist, recalls that there were 33 children, 84 women and only 15 men among the 132 recovered. "This made our job as pathologists more difficult from a human, emotional point of view."
"It is something you don't forget, particularly the kids," Garda Chief Supt Dermot Dwyer says. The helplessness, the sadness is still with him. Air traffic control supervisor, Michael Hehir, says he has never been to Ahakista. "I like to forget that the incident ever happened," he says.
True Lives: Ahakista is on RTE 1 on Tuesday at 10 p.m.
