Canada hasn’t done enough for Air India bombing victims, says pilot’s son

Anil Singh Hanse, son of the pilot of Air India Kanishka Flight 182 which was blown off mid-air on June 23, 1985, says the least that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau can do on this day is to light a candle in memory of the victims. He says Canada has not done enough to help the victim families have a sense of closure to the tragedy.

Anil was on a diving assignment in Scotland when an American diver gave him the news about the Air India bombing – masterminded by Canada-based Khalistani Talwinder Singh Parmar who was later killed by Punjab Police in India.

He recounts how he lived through the nightmare.

My father Narendra Singh Hanse, who was 57 then, was the pilot of the Air India Kanishka Flight 182 which was bombed off the Irish coast on June 23, 1985, killing all 329 people on board.

On the 38th anniversary of the worst terror attack in Canadian history, that dark Sunday still haunts me. It is seared in my memory. For a long time, I thought why I was not on that flight with my dad. My hair stands on end every time I recall that morning. The pain will never go away. I was 24 at the time of the tragedy.

We fought for years with the Canadian system for justice, but ultimately we gave up. There is no point in getting bitter. All I now want is to cherish the great memories of my father who was of royal lineage.

Our family comes from Sahanpur in Bijnore district of UP. Dad was the grandson of Raja Bharat Singh. Flying was his passion. In the 30 years that he was with Air India, he took only one sick day off because he loved to fly. Mom told us that once when he fell ill, he didn’t know how to report sick.

When the Air India Kanishka flight started from Mumbai to Canada, I travelled with my father till Delhi as I had to catch a flight to London from Delhi. I remember sitting with dad and the co-pilot in the cockpit. We both stayed together overnight in Delhi and visited his cousin who lived in Greater Kailash.

I was going to the UK on my second diving assignment in the North Sea. Dad told that on their way back from Canada, he would radio me a message when their flight lands in London on Sunday. Their flight never landed in London.

When Air India Flight 182 was blown off mid-air at about 8.12 am on that Sunday, I was in Aberdeen in Scotland on a diving assignment with an offshore oil rig. I was staying at a bed and breakfast with other divers. When I woke up at 7 am that morning, some strange thoughts came to me. I felt like I was in a tailspin. I started thinking about Air India, but I shook off those thoughts.

I had to catch a helicopter at 9 am to leave for the offshore rig when this news broke. When I went for my breakfast, one of the American divers who was listening to news on radio told me that an Air India flight had crashed.

I was dazed, stunned. My mind went blank. Frantically, I started calling Air India to find out as I knew my dad was on the plane, but they didn’t know what to say… they were all too stunned to speak.

I called my mom Sheila Gill in Mumbai. Her initial reaction was that since dad was a strong, big man he would swim to safety!

I caught a flight to London later in the day. At the Air India office at Heathrow, the staff were absolutely overwhelmed. There were scenes of chaos all around. Everybody was living through a nightmare.

That night, Air India put us up in hotels in London. Three or four days later, they took us to Cork in Ireland.

There were raw and emotional scenes in hospital as dazed family members from Canada and India frantically looked for the bodies of their loved ones. The hospital didn’t allow us to see the bodies. They had put up photos of the victims. I was in Cork for a couple of days and then returned to London.

In London, Air India organized our air tickets and I went to Delhi where we performed a havan for my father at a temple in Greater Kailash. Then we performed ceremonies in Mumbai. Mom was totally devastated. She and dad had deep bonds. She was an air hostess when she met my father. The two fell in love and married. She was a Sikh from Tarn Taran and her father was Navy Lt. Commander Santa Singh Gill.

My fondest memories with my dad come flooding back.

As father worked for Air India, we lived in Bombay for most of my childhood.

In the 1970s, he was posted to London for three years. I was 13 at the time and did not realise how privileged I was to visit New York on weekends (occasionally) when dad operated London-New York-London flights.

I would walk into the cockpit whenever I felt like, and sitting in the jump seat was no big deal during take-off and landings. While other kids shared where they had been during the weekend, I would casually mention that my weekend was spent visiting New York and staying with father in a suite at Biltmore Hotel on 47th Street.

My father was very attached to his family and would try his utmost to visit the family during his time off. He was a quiet man with a good sense of humour. I would never forget how he once got me involved in an attempt to make mom laugh (must have had a domestic thing) by having his pyjamas pulled up to chest height, donning black leather shoes and asking me to do the same. Needless to say, my mother was aghast at the sight of father and son walking around our apartment looking like village idiots… he laughed his head off at mom’s reaction.

When I was at sea, dad would radio the oil rig I was working on and pass messages to me. He would wish me well and confirm our upcoming meetings. This would give my workmates an opportunity to rib me and every plane in the sky was cause for this ribbing to begin anew.

We lost father when I was 24. Life never was the same after Air India Flight 182. I will always cherish the good times and happy memories. I miss what life might have been.

I was trained as a deep-sea diver, but I found it unable to continue with this career after my father’s death. It took me years to return to the diving industry. Much of this was due to the memories and close relationship I had with my father.

They used to joke about dad and me – that how father took to the skies and son to the deep sea. I was fond of diving from childhood and went to Sydney to train for deep-sea commercial diving in 1979. I used to go out of Mumbai on deep-sea commercial diving assignments in Dubai and other places.

What do we do on June 23 on each anniversary?

Every June 23, my wife Sharan Kaur, who is also a Sikh, places flowers and pictures of dad, with a Bible, pictures of Guru Nanak and Hindu gods (out of respect for all religions), lights candles and we have a quiet day.

My wife has been our rock. She left Punjab in 1984 and she has seen and felt pain from both sides as her and my kin were killed in those dark times.  My mom’s cousins were also killed in 1984. So, we have seen grief from both sides of the fence.

Here I am 38 years later with two children of my own – 30-year-old son Nathan and 26-year-old daughter Simi. It has been hard on them too while growing up and seeing their grandmother and me talking about Flight 182. Mom passed away in 2010. (Anil Singh Hanse lives with his family in Melbourne, Australia)

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