Air India Kanishka bombing: 30 years on, RCMP still probing attack

Three decades after an explosion ripped apart Air India Flight 182, killing 329 people aboard, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has said that a probe into the bombing is still 'active and ongoing'.

RCMP spokeswoman Sergeant Annie Linteau said that a 'dedicated team' continued to probe the bombing, considered the worst terror attack in Canada's history, reported Toronto Star.

On the 30th anniversary of the attack, Linteau admitted that the investigation had been the longest and one of the most complex domestic terrorism investigations that the RCMP had undertaken in the history of the Canadian judiciary.

The pace of the probe has been severely hampered by difficulties in raising the plane's wreckage from the ocean bed, agency turf wars and problems in persuading witnesses to come forward.

A federal commission of inquiry would conclude if a 'cascading series of errors' by police, intelligence officers and air safety regulators had allowed the deadly attack to take place on June 23, 1985, which killed all people onboard, most of whom were of Indian origin.

Authorities believe that the attack, which caused Air India's Boeing 747-237B 'Kanishka' to explode midair in Irish airspace, was carried out by Sikh extremists in retaliation for 1984's Operation Blue Star.