Call for Air India bomb inquiry

Ripudaman Singh Malik (L) and Ajaib Singh Bagri were cleared

Canada's parliament has passed a motion calling for a public inquiry into the 1985 Air India bombing that killed 329 people, most of them Canadians.

Two Sikh men were acquitted of the bombing last month in Vancouver.

Canada's Conservative opposition tabled the motion and it passed by 48 votes, embarrassing the Liberal government.

The government insists the motion is non-binding but a representative of the victims' relatives said it now had no excuse not to hold the inquiry.

Meeting boycotted

The government has yet to announce whether it will appeal against the acquittal of Ripudaman Singh Malik, a wealthy Vancouver businessman, and Ajaib Singh Bagri, a mill worker from the interior of British Columbia.

The judge had ruled key witnesses were not credible and that the evidence did not prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

TIMELINE 6 Jun 1984: Indian troops invade Golden Temple in Amritsar to flush out Sikh separatists 31 Oct 1984: India's prime minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards. In the ethnic riots which follow 3,000 Sikhs are killed 23 Jun 1985: A bomb blows up Air India Flight 182 as it flies from Montreal to London. 329 people are killed 16 Mar 2005: Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri acquitted of Air India bombing

The ruling shocked victims' relatives, who began calls for a public inquiry into the police handling of the matter.

Prosecutors said they were hampered by a decision by Canadian intelligence services to destroy tapped recordings of the suspects.

Two bombs were checked onto flights in Vancouver. One blew up, killing two baggage handlers in Japan as they transferred it to one Air India flight.

The other blew up on Air India Flight 182 off the Irish coast - the worst airborne terror attack until the 11 September attacks in New York and Washington.

The Canadian government has tried to placate the victims' relatives - Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan called a meeting with them on Tuesday in Toronto but it was boycotted by many.

Spokesman for the Air India Victims Relatives' Association, Susheel Gupta, said the boycott was because Ms McLellan had refused to back the public inquiry.

She says early police mistakes happened too long ago to be covered in a formal inquiry.

Ms McLellan instead proposes appointing an independent adviser to look into the aftermath of the affair, but Mr Gupta dismissed this as a "smokescreen".

Police believe the bombings were in revenge for the Indian government's storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Sikhism's holiest shrine, in 1984.