A Canadian journalist who followed the Kanishka bombing case for 20 years has come out with a new book in which she terms as ‘‘shallow and superficial’’ the verdict that acquitted the two prime accused after a lengthy and emotionally-charged trial.In the book Loss of Faith: How the Air India Bombers Got Away with Murder, Kim Bolan, a Vancouver Sun reporter gives her account of the plot that brought the Kanishka flight crashing into the Atlantic Ocean off the Irish coast in 1985, killing all 329 people on board.Bolan, who has followed the story ever since it was assigned to her as a rookie reporter, is critical of the Vancouver Supreme Court’s 600-page verdict in the case, delivered in March this year, acquitting Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri. Based on her investigative notes and stories, she maintains that it wasn’t reasonable that Malik and Bagri had an ‘‘ongoing close association’’ with convicted bomb-maker Inderjit Singh Reyat and with alleged Kanishka mastermind Talwinder Singh Parmar, ‘‘but were not involved in the conspiracy’’.Bolan writes that one of the most telling moments for her was when reporters were taken in sealed police vans to view the recovered wreckage of the plane at a secret Vancouver warehouse. ‘‘I was filled with sadness as I stood there,’’ she writes. ‘‘I wished all Canadians could have seen the absolute devastation wreaked by the bombing. Maybe then they would understand the magnitude of the calamity.’’Bolan has received death threats because of her coverage. Her house has been shot at and her family needed police protection.The author says that it is a story Canadians need to recognise as one of international terrorism far predating the September 11, 2001, US attacks.
