Kanishka bombing: Canada police identifies 'Mr X'; refuses to disclose his identity

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have finally identified "Mr X" - a hitherto unknown person who helped test a bomb a few weeks before the deadly June 1985 mid-air bombing of the Kanishka, an Air India flight which took off from Canada's Montreal and was bound for Mumbai.

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However, the RCMP refused to disclose the individual's identity citing "privacy laws."

"The previously unidentified suspect in the mass murder case recently died without ever facing charges," Vancouver Sun quoted RCMP assistant commissioner David Teboul as saying.

"The name cannot be released due to privacy laws even though the he man is dead," he added.

Teboul made the revelation ahead of the 40th anniversary (June 23) of the bombing by Khalistani terrorists, which killed all 329 (307 passengers and 22 crew members) on board AI 182. He was speaking in Ireland, as a member of a Canadian delegation which is in European country for the anniversary ceremony.

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AI 182 was flying towards London for a stopover in the British capital when the bomb exploded and the remnants of the aircraft fell into a sea off the coast of Ireland.

How was 'Mr. X' identified?

According to Teboul, despite the acquittals of two key suspects in 2005, investigators continued to work on the file “to tie up some loose ends," and this led them to uncover the identity of Mr X.

On June 4, 1985, he travelled to Duncan, British Columbia, with terror plot mastermind Talwinder Singh Parmar. The two then joined up with electrician Inderjit Singh Reyat.

The group then went into the woods and tested the bomb, unaware that they were being followed by agents from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. The agents heard the explosion but mistook it as a gunshot.

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While Parmar, the Babbar Khalsa International founder, was killed in a police encounter in Punjab in 1992, Reyat pleaded guilty to assisting Mr X and Parmar in developing the Air India bomb. However, he later testified that he didn't know the name of Mr. X.