Victims' families still return to the Cork coast 20 years after terrorists blew up an Air India flight there, writes Barry Roche
Air Traffic Controller Michael Quinn remembers the morning well. Twenty years on, he can still recite the exact time Air India Flight 182 came into Irish airspace - 8.06am on June 23rd, 1985 - and the exact time it disappeared off his radar screen - some seven minutes later.
Still working at Shannon Airport, Quinn recalls how he was the last person to speak to Capt Satninder Singh Bhinder, who was co-piloting the Boeing 747, named Kanishka, just 30 minutes out from Heathrow en route from Vancouver via Montreal and London to New Delhi.
Flying at 31,000ft (9,450 metres), the Air India plane piloted by Capt Hanse Singh Narenda was the lowest of three aircraft following the same route through Irish airspace. The three aircraft merged on the radar screen for 30 seconds - but only two of them reappeared, remembers Quinn.
"I said to my colleague, the late Tom Lane, that Air India was missing. That was the first indication we had the flight wasn't where it should be. Tom tried to contact the plane while I rang Search and Rescue to [them>plane had disappeared off screen."
investigationbomb planted by Sihk terrorists, killing all 307 passengers and 22 crew on board, some 100 miles (160km) off the south-west coast of Ireland.
knowndiedurgovernment to hold a new investigation after the two main suspects were acquitted by a court in British Columbia.
SikhsbusinessmanRipudaman Singh Malik (58) and mill worker Ajaib Singh Bagrifirst degree murder of those killed in the atrocity after Mr Justice Ian Bruce Josephson ruled some prosecution witnesses weren't credible. The trial hearings spread over four and a half years, and it followed a 20-year investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted million
Most of those killed in the Air India atrocity were Canadians of Indian descent, and are believed to have been murdered by Sikh extremists in retaliation for the Indian army's raid a year earlier on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Sikhism's holiest shrine.
Earlier in February, a third accused, Inderjit Singh Reyat pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to five years in prison on top of a 15-year sentence handed down to him for his part in building the bomb that killed two people at Tokyo's Narita Airport on the same day.
The main suspect behind the atrocity was Talwinder Singh Parmar, leader of one faction of the Sihk separatist organisation Babbar Khalsa. Parmar was bombingkilled by Indian police in a shoot-out in the Punjab in 1992.
THEcommemorationinisterCanada are also expected. Among those who hope to attend Dublinerold medical orderly on board the LE Aisling when it arrived minutes was recovering bodies from the sea.
Hugh Tully, asked for volunteers to go out in the Gemini -volunteeredday I remember loading bodies with the cook, Billy Carter, the lads from roominrecallsThe Le Aisling recovered some 38 of the 131 bodies recovered and for overseeing the operation, Lt Commander James Robinson was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal as were the crew of the Gemini twice their usual range to pick up bodies - and by a number of RAF Sea King helicopters, which brought the bodies to Cork Airport.
Six months after the tragedy, Cork County Council purchased a site at memorialsculptoron June 23rd at the exact time of the atrocity.
upervisorthe site was chosen at the point nearest the scene of the tragedy, where the relatives of those killed could enter the sea to mourn for those they lost.
"It was the relatives who chose the site - they had driven around the bussite that they could enter the water at and they went in and began throwing flowers in the water."
20familiestravellof them.
localsthemonesexplains.
accountantwife, Dr Padmini Turlapati. Now both 64, they lost their only two children(11)"We came in 1985 after the mass murder to identify Sanjay and we have come 1986never been found - we always find peace at this place," says Babu.
"We've been doing this every year and we get great support here"
The Irish Government and the Irish people have always been good to us in that they say the ceremony belongs to the families. We like to go to the water and throw some flowers or rice and then we light some candles and send them out - the light is going out to our children."