Modi to visit Kanishka bombing site during Toronto visit

PM Narendra Modi will pay tribute to the victims of the 1985 Kanishka bombing during his visit to Toronto later this month. A significant gesture on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the terrorist strike which left 329 dead in a mid air explosion, Modi is also hoping to remind the local authorities of how much India has suffered from terrorism in the past.

Sikhs For Justice group, which continues to demand an independent Khalistan, recently appealed to Canadian PM Stephen Harper to press Modi for a referendum in Punjab.

Sources said Modi will visit the Humber Bay Park memorial for the victims at Lake Ontario waterfront in Toronto during his visit to Canada's commercial capital. Air India flight 182, Kanishka, was cruising at an altitude of over 9000 metres in the Irish airspace on June 23 1985, when it was brought down by an explosion carried out by alleged Babbar Khalsa terrorists. Most of the victims of what remains the most spine-chilling mass murder in the country were Canadian citizens of Indian origin. The terror attack carried out in retaliation for Operation Bluestar.

Government officials did not confirm if Harper was going to accompany Modi to the memorial. Five years ago, on the 25th anniversary of the Kanishka bombing, Harper visited the same memorial to tender an apology on behalf of the Canadian government for what he described as ``institutional failings of 25 years ago and the treatment of the victim's families thereafter." Canadian authorities had only a few weeks before that described the bombing and the subsequent events as a ``cascading series of errors''.

Speaking on the occasion, Harper had insisted that the terror strike ``was conceived in Canada, executed in Canada, by Canadian citizens, and its victims were themselves mostly citizens of our country."

This was a horrific incident which shook the world's conscience. It is with a sense of deep pain and sorrow that I join the families and friends in paying my homage to all those who fell victim to this most barbarous act of terrorism", he said on the 25th anniversary of the crash of Air India Flight 182.

Modi's predecessor Manmohan Singh had described the incident as a barbarous act of terrorism on the same occasion. ``This was a horrific incident which shook the world's conscience. It is with a sense of deep pain and sorrow that I join the families and friends in paying my homage to all those who fell victim to this most barbarous act of terrorism", he had said.

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