Temple Holds First Service For Air India Victims

[2desi]

Temple holds first service for Air India victims

The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER, B.C. — A B.C. Sikh temple will hold its first memorial service ever beginning this morning for 331 people killed in two separate 1985 bombings targeting Air India.

Inderjit Singh Bains, head of the Dashmesh Darbar temple in Surrey, says it's about time his congregation honoured the innocent victims of Canada's worst case of mass murder.

Air India Flight 182 took off from Vancouver but fell from the sky on June 23, 1985 after a suitcase bomb exploded mid-flight near the coast of Ireland.

On the same day, a blast in luggage destined for another Air India flight at Tokyo's Narita Airport killed two baggage handlers.

The three-day service in Surrey is stirring up controversy because on the wall of the temple dining room hangs a framed photo of Talwinder Singh Parmar, the man who allegedly masterminded the bombings.

Rattan Singh Kalsi, whose daughter Indira Kalsi was killed aboard the Air India plane, says the temple should remove the photo, although Bains says Parmar wasn't convicted of any crime before he died in 1992 and before two other men were acquitted of all charges in 2005.

http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/C...ishColumbiaHome

Sorry, supposed to say Dasmesh not Damesh (in the title)

[mann_kaum_layee_qurbaan]

there should have been a "service", (i'm putting this in quotes because we really need to stop using christian terms to describe sikh practices) a long time ago, logically right after the tragedy.

no sikh person or institution can be against consoling victims of senseless violence.

peace.