June 20 :
The 20th of June in Toronto: A memorial service for the victims of the Air India 'Kanishka' aircraft bombing in Toronto will be held in South Lawns, Queen's Park on June 23 from 12-1 pm, according to an announcement made on Wednesday (local time) by the Consulate General of India, Toronto. According to the Indian Consulate General in Toronto, India has long been a leader in the battle against terrorism and has firmly resisted the normalisation of terrorist acts. The consulate brought attention to the tragic bombing of the Kanishka and described it as "one of the most heinous acts of terror in civil aviation."
The 39th anniversary of the bombing of Air India flight 182 (Kanishka), which killed 329 people, including 82 children, is being marked in South Lawns, Queen's Park, in Toronto, according to the Consulate General of India in Toronto. India has consistently condemned the legitimization and glorifying of terrorism and has been a leader in the battle against it, according to a statement released by the Consulate General of India in Toronto and shared on X. The bombing of Air India flight 182 (Kanishka), which occurred 39 years ago on June 23, 2024, and killed 329 people—86 of them children—is still considered one of the worst acts of terror in the history of public aviation.
The families of the victims have always had our unwavering support. The yearly memorial service will be place in South Lawns, Queen's Park, Toronto, from 12 to 1 pm on June 23, 2024. Everyone is welcome to attend this event. "At all times during the memorial service, please respect the seriousness of the occasion," it continued. The Air India 182 Kanishka crashed on June 23, 1985, while en route from Montreal, Canada, to London, UK, and Delhi, India. The cause of the explosion was a "cowardly act of terror, carried out by Canada based Khalistani terrorists," according to a press release from the Indian High Commission in Ottawa in 2023.
In the midst of tense relations with Canada over the Khalistani terrorist issue, India is hosting the memorial service. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada claimed in September of last year that agents from India were complicit in the assassination of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, further straining relations between the two countries. The Indian government has rejected the claims, describing them as "absurd and motivated." Last June, near a Gurdwara in Surrey, gunshots murdered Nijjar, who had been branded a terrorist by India's National Investigation Agency in 2020. S. Jaishankar, India's minister of external affairs, denied obtaining information linking Indian nationals to the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, an Indian national labelled as a terrorist, in Canada earlier in May.
"I also read that another arrest has been made," Jaishankar said in response to media questioning here. It is standard practice to notify the government or embassy of the country of origin if the individual in question is an Indian national. Beyond that, though, we have always said that we are willing to look into anything—any incident in Canada, any act of violence in Canada—if there is evidence or information that could be pertinent to an investigation in India.
He stressed that although the Indian government or embassy would normally be notified of the arrest of any Indian national, no concrete evidence warranting an inquiry by Indian agency has been received thus far. But nothing concrete that our investigating agencies can work with has ever been submitted. At a media interaction at a seminar on Indian Capital Markets 'Roadmap for Viksit Bharat' at the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in Mumbai, the External Affairs Minister stated, "And I'm aware nothing has changed in the last few days in that regard." His comments followed the CBC News report that a fourth suspect was apprehended by Canadian authorities for possible participation in Nijjar's murder. Amandeep Singh, a 22-year-old guy, was named as the accused.
