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Air India Flight 182 was an Air India flight operating on the Montreal, Canada–London, UK–Delhi, India route. On 23 June 1985, the Boeing 747-237B serving the flight (c/n 21473/330, registration , "Emperor Kanishka") was destroyed by a bomb at an altitude of . It crashed into the Atlantic Ocean while in Irish airspace. It was the first bombing of a 747 jumbo jet. A total of 329 people were killed, including 268 Canadian citizens, 27 Britons, and 24 Indians.〔 The majority of the victims were Canadian citizens of Indian ancestry. The incident was the largest mass murder in Canadian history. It was the deadliest terrorist attack involving an airplane until the September 11, 2001, attacks. It is also the deadliest aircraft bombing. The bombing of Air India 182 occurred at the same time as the Narita Airport bombing. Investigators believe that the two plots were linked, and that those responsible were aiming for a double bombing. However, the bomb at Narita exploded before it could be loaded onto the plane. Canadian law enforcement determined that the main suspects in the bombing were members of the Sikh militant group Babbar Khalsa. The attack is thought to have been a retaliation against India for the operation carried out by the Indian Army Operation Blue Star to flush out several hundred Sikh militants who were within the premises of the Golden temple and the surrounding structures ordered by the Indian government, headed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Though a handful of members were arrested and tried, Inderjit Singh Reyat, a Canadian national, remains the only person convicted of involvement in the bombing. Singh pleaded guilty in 2003 to manslaughter. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison for building the bombs that exploded aboard Flight 182 and at Narita.〔 The subsequent investigation and prosecution lasted almost twenty years and was the most expensive trial in Canadian history, costing nearly CAD 130 million. The Governor General-in-Council in 2006 appointed the former Supreme Court Justice John Major to conduct a commission of inquiry. His report was completed and released on 17 June 2010. It concluded that a "cascading series of errors" by the government of Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) had allowed the terrorist attack to take place.〔 ==Background and motivation== Most official accounts place responsibility for the attack on Sikh extremism. Tensions between Sikh and Hindus and other groups date to before the Partition of British India in 1947. The Sikh communities suffered much death, violence and hardship following the partition, as did other religious groups. The partition created Pakistan and India. The state of Punjab was divided between India and Pakistan. Later, the Khalistan movement arose to create another Sikh homeland in the Punjab region of India and Pakistan; it referred to the 19th-century Sikh Empire. During the 1970s, during and following the widespread deaths and social disruption due to the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, many new Sikh refugees emigrated to Canada. These included men who became the leaders and members of the Babbar Khalsa, such as Talwinder Singh Parmar, Ajaib Singh Bagri, Ripudaman Singh Malik and Inderjit Singh Reyat. By the 1980s, the area around Vancouver, British Columbia had become the largest center of Sikh population outside India. They carried with them rivalries and sectarian tensions from India and Pakistan.〔 The Babbar Khalsa in its current form developed from the violent clash between the rival Nirankari and Akhand Kirtani Jatha (AKJ) sects on the festival of ''Vaisakhi'' in India on 13 April 1978, where thirteen Sikhs were killed. The founders of this Panthic group vowed to avenge the deaths of Sikhs. Talwinder Singh Parmar led the militant wing of AKJ, which became the Babbar Khalsa, to "punish" the Nirankaris. They had been cleared by the Punjab government of wrongdoing. On 24 April 1980 Gurbachan Singh, the ''Baba'' (head) of the Nirankaris, was killed; Babbar Khalsa claimed responsibility for the assassination.〔 On 19 November 1981, Parmar was among the militants who escaped from a shootout in which two Punjab Police officers were gunned down outside the house of Amarjit Singh Nihang in Ludhiana district. This added to the notoriety of Babbar Khalsa and its leader. He went to Canada.〔 In 1982, India issued a warrant for Parmar's arrest for six charges of murder stemming from the killing of the police officers.〔 India notified Canada that Parmar was a wanted terrorist in 1981 and asked for his extradition in 1982. Canada denied the request in July 1982.〔 After an Interpol alert, Parmar was arrested while attempting to enter Germany. Germany chose to handle the case locally rather than hand him over to India. Parmar went on a hunger strike to win his religious right to wear a turban and have vegetarian meals in the Düsseldorf jail. After India received information that Parmar had made assassination threats against Indira Gandhi, they found that Germany had decided that the evidence was weak. They had expelled Parmar and released him to Canada on June 1984 after nearly a year in jail.〔 On 3–6 June 1984, the Khalistan movement was sparked into action as Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi ordered Operation Blue Star, the storming of the Golden Temple.〔 Militants led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale (who was killed in the attack) had amassed weapons in the Sikh temple, the militants demanded that Sikhs not be treated as second class citizens in India and demanded equality through changes in the Indian constitution or otherwise the creation of a Sikh state, Khalistan. Some independent estimates of the death toll of the operation ran as high as 1500 civilian deaths, which led to an uproar amongst Sikhs worldwide. On 31 October 1984, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards. In retaliation, 1984 anti-Sikh riots, guided by certain Indian National Congress members, killed thousands of Sikhs in India.〔 Shortly after Blue Star, Parmar visited the auto mechanic and electrician Inderjit Singh Reyat, who lived in Duncan, British Columbia, a small community north of Victoria on Vancouver Island. He asked him to construct a bomb; Reyat later claimed he had no idea what it would be used for. Reyat asked various people in the community about dynamite, saying he wanted to remove tree stumps on his property.〔 Reyat also discussed explosives with a co-worker, while expressing anger at the Indian government and Indira Gandhi in particular.〔 Later that year, Ajaib Singh Bagri accompanied Parmar as his right-hand man in the armed struggle against the Indian government. Bagri worked as a forklift driver at a sawmill near the town of Kamloops. He was known as a powerful preacher in the Indo-Canadian community.〔 The pair travelled across Canada to rally Sikhs to the cause of avenging the attack on the Golden Temple. They used the meetings as fundraisers for Babbar Khalsa. A former head priest in Hamilton testified that Bagri said, "the Indian Government is our enemy, the same way the Hindu society is our enemy."〔 Bagri told a congregation, "Get your weapons ready so we can take revenge against the Indian Government".〔 Bagri called for action:
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