Khalistan Movement: When an Air India plane with 329 passengers was destroyed in the air

 Khalistan Movement: When an Air India plane with 329 passengers was destroyed in the air 

 

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This article was first published on the BBC Urdu website in March 2022, and is being reproduced for readers today.

Almost 52 years ago today, on 12 October 1971, Dr. Jagjit Singh Chauhan published an advertisement in the New York Times in which he declared himself the first president of the so-called Khalistan.

Few people paid attention to this declaration at the time, but by the 1980s, the international movement for Khalistan had gained momentum.

According to the data of the police of the Indian state of Punjab, 21,469 people lost their lives in the 12-year-long violent incidents related to the Khalistan movement from 1981 to 1993, and the economy of Punjab, the most prosperous state of India, was destroyed.

On June 23, 1985, Khalistani separatists planted a time bomb on an Air India flight from Montreal, Canada to Mumbai, causing the plane to explode mid-flight in Irish airspace, killing all 329 people on board. gone.

It was considered the worst terrorist attack in history before the 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001.

It should be noted that earlier in 1984, the Khalistan movement had gained momentum in India, due to which the Indian army attacked the Golden Temple, the holy place of Sikhs, in June. In response to this attack, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards in October of the same year.

Two people who checked in but did not board the plane

In British Columbia, Canada, Talvendra Parmar's yellow turban-wearing fellow spent nearly $3,000 to buy two business-class air tickets. They also managed to put two suitcases full of gunpowder, which were fitted with timers, on two flights from Vancouver.

These flights were to reach Bangkok and Mumbai by following different routes.

No one noticed that two passengers, M Singh and L Singh, who checked in for these flights, did not board the plane. After checking in, they disappeared from the airport.

Canadian journalist Terry Melsky, who wrote the recently published book 'Blood for Blood: Fifty Years of the Global Khalistan Project', writes in his book that the passenger standing behind M Singh in the line still remembers how M Singh was very were careful. They were pushing their suitcases with their fingers and as the line of passengers moved forward, they kept moving their suitcases forward with their feet instead of their hands.