Canada seeks India’s help to examine craft wreckage

A two-member Indian team will be visiting Canada at the request of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to examine the secretly reassemb...

A two-member Indian team will be visiting Canada at the request of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to examine the secretly reassembled wreckage of Air-India’s Kanishka that crashed off the Irish coast on June 23, 1985, killing all 329 on board.

It’s learnt that Joint Director General of Civil Aviation K. Gohain and General Manager (Engineering) of Air-India Sailesh Deshmukh have been requested by the RCMP to undertake a visit. The two officials were associated with the technical aspects of the investigation carried out by the Justice B.N. Kirpal Committee on the Kanishka explosion and were subsequently involved in the transfer of evidence to the RCMP.

The team is slated to leave for Vancouver later this week for a five-day tour during which they are expected to visit the secret location where the reassembled Kanishka has been kept.

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The Kirpal Committee had examined the wreckage. Of this, nearly 400 pieces were selected by the RCMP for their investigations. These were then transfered from the Air-India hangar in Mumbai to Canada under the Indo-Canadian Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty.

According to the Committee, the metallurgical examination of wreckage pieces had confirmed the explosion occurred in the forward cargo compartment of the jet. Analysis of the tape recovered from the cockpit voice recorder had established this.

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