15 years after he last spoke publicly about Canada’s Air India Flight 182 inquiry, its commissioner has broken his silence with a stark warning: the next act of Khalistan extremism may take the form of assassinations and other criminal violence.
“It won’t happen the same way. It won’t be a bomb on a plane,” former Supreme Court justice John C Major said in an exclusive online interview with RuchiWaliOfficial (YouTube) in late July. “But there will be something else. There will be assassinations. There will be all kinds of criminal activity,” he added.
Major, 95, led the Commission of Inquiry into the investigation of the bombing of Air India Flight 182. Its final report was released in 2010.
Air India Flight 182 was bombed over the Atlantic on June 23, 1985, killing all 329 people aboard, including 82 children. Most were Canadians. A second bomb from the plot killed two baggage handlers at Tokyo’s Narita airport.
Despite 329 deaths aboard Flight 182, only one person was convicted in connection with the bombings.
International Sikh Youth Federation member Inderjit Singh Reyat pleaded guilty to manslaughter for helping construct the Flight 182 bomb, following an earlier manslaughter conviction for the Narita bombing. He was later convicted of perjury.
Canada’s inquiry concluded that the plot was conceived and executed here by a Khalistani extremist network led by Babbar Khalsa leader Talwinder Singh Parmar. It documented failures in intelligence, policing, aviation security and RCMP-CSIS cooperation.
Major said post-bombing reforms made air travel safer, and he does not expect another aircraft to be destroyed the same way. But better aviation security does not mean the broader threat has disappeared.
“Government changes. People’s views change,” he said. With artificial intelligence and other rapidly developing technologies creating new possibilities, “I don’t think we can rest comfortably.”
His warning makes Air India a present-day security issue. Khalistan extremism can reappear through assassinations, intimidation and criminal networks even when airports are safer.
Recent criminal cases have exposed intersections among political extremism, transnational gangs, extortion and targeted violence in Canada. Operation Hard Ball alleges that Balkaran Brar, better known as Lawrence Bishnoi, and Satinderjeet Singh, known as Goldy Brar, ordered Hardeep Singh Nijjar’s murder as part of an organized-crime conspiracy. Its public indictment does not allege that India ordered the killing.
Canada Initially Saw Air India As India’s Problem
Major also offered a candid explanation for Canada’s early detachment from the bombing. “If it had been a Canadian plane, it would have been obvious to the government that a Canadian plane was involved,” he said. When he first heard about the disaster, being an Air India plane he did not associate it with Canada. He believes governments and the public similarly regarded it at first as “an India and Air India problem”.
“We learned much later that Canada was very much involved,” he said, although “there was nothing on the surface to indicate that”.
That perception turned the murder of hundreds of Canadians into a supposedly foreign tragedy, even though the RCMP and CSIS had received multiple warnings, knew of threats against Air India and were surveilling Parmar before the bombing. It exposes a persistent Canadian vulnerability: diaspora violence is treated as an imported conflict even when its networks, warning signs and intended victims are already in Canada.
Major Rejects Claims That India Planted the Bomb
Major firmly rejected recurring allegations that the Indian government orchestrated the bombing.
“It was investigated,” he said. “There was no evidence that India or the government of India had any participation in the bomb.”
He said critics may question Indian law enforcement, but “as it relates to the bombing, they had nothing to do with it”. Those continuing to advance alternative theories, he added, should produce evidence: “You should ask them for substance.”
For India, this is not a new finding. It is the official conclusion of a Canadian public inquiry. What remains missing is Canadian ownership of that conclusion. Ottawa commissioned the inquiry, yet its political leaders rarely defend the finding when the conspiracy theory resurfaces. Canada appears unwilling to state plainly that its own inquiry investigated the accusation against India and found no evidence for it.
The comments are significant because Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal sponsored a 2024 House of Commons e-petition seeking a fresh inquiry into possible foreign-intelligence involvement. Although parliamentary sponsorship is not formally equivalent to endorsement, Dhaliwal’s decision gave institutional visibility to a theory Major says his commission thoroughly investigated and found unsupported.
‘I Will Debate Anybody’ On Inquiry
Major was equally forceful when asked whether his inquiry had left important questions unanswered.
The commission worked for more than two and a half years, employed roughly half a dozen lawyers and heard witnesses from Canada, Ireland and elsewhere. Major considered the report complete and remains unaware of anything material it missed.
“I am absolutely convinced that after two and a half years our report was complete, and I will debate anybody,” he said.
He did not claim perfection but rejected suggestions that the commission failed to pursue available evidence.
“I don’t think there was anything left when we finished,” he said.
Recycling a rejected allegation sustains the Khalistan movement’s victimhood narrative: extremists were framed, terrorists were martyrs and India was responsible for violence committed in Canada. It converts accountability into persecution and supports grievance, fundraising, recruitment and political mobilization. Repetition turns conspiracy into communal memory while official findings become optional.
Parmar’s Admirers Are ‘Misinformed’
Major also addressed the continued glorification of Parmar, whom the inquiry identified as the plot’s principal leader. He acknowledged that some supporters of an independent Khalistan regard Parmar as a hero. Major’s response was measured but unequivocal: “My only problem is that they are misinformed.”
Political advocacy is protected expression. But honouring a man identified by a Canadian inquiry as the central figure in mass murder rewrites terrorism as sacrifice and gives violence a heroic afterlife.
This does not implicate Sikhs as a community. Sikh civilians were among the principal victims of Khalistani violence in Punjab, and the Punjab Police that defeated the insurgency was itself predominantly Sikh.
Babbar Khalsa International remains a listed terrorist entity in Canada. Yet Western governments struggle with the ecosystem surrounding Khalistan extremism, especially when scrutiny is portrayed as hostility toward Sikhs rather than protection of those threatened within Sikh communities.
The Air India experience demonstrates how extremists can exploit that hesitation. Democratic rights become political cover; cultural sensitivity becomes institutional paralysis; and officials treat domestic intimidation as a distant ethnic dispute until violence forces recognition.
Are the RCMP and CSIS Finally Cooperating?
Major’s most pointed remark concerned the institutional rivalry that damaged the Air India investigation.
“I would like to know if CSIS and the RCMP are getting along,” he said dryly. “If you can find out, you can tell me.”
The sarcasm carried a serious question. His inquiry documented the consequences of poor coordination between intelligence and police. 15 years later, Major is not prepared to assume the problem has been solved.
His intervention asks what it would take to treat Khalistan extremism as a transnational security issue rather than a historical tragedy or India’s domestic concern.
Air India supplied the body count. The investigation established the evidence, while Major’s inquiry documented the institutional failures that allowed the plot to proceed and justice to falter. His first extended interview in 15 years now delivers another warning: safer aircraft do not mean society is safe from the ideology, intimidation and violence behind the bombing of Flight 182.