40 years apart, Ahmedabad plane tragedy reignites painful memories of Kanishka flight pilot's widow
PTC News Desk: The Thursday afternoon of June 12 turned the world upside down for many families after they lost their loved ones in one of the deadliest aviation tragedies of the country. However Amarjit Kaur Bhinder had to relive the pain of losing her husband in plane crash 40 years ago.
“It appeared to me that it has happened again,” she said as her voice weight down.
Amarjit Kaur Bhinder is the widow of Captain SS Bhinder who was the first officer on Air India's ill-fated Kanishka flight 182. On June 23, 1985, the flight — travelling from Canada to India — was destroyed mid-air by a terrorist bomb, killing all 329 on board.
On that day Amarjit was waiting in Mumbai for her husband who promised to call upon reaching London. However that promise remained unfulfilled.
“I kept waiting. He had promised me to call,” she recalled. “Instead, a family friend, actor Veerendra, came to our house and broke the news. He kept asking me, ‘Where is Paaji? Which route was he flying?’ Then I just knew. No one survives a mid-air blast.”
“It didn’t occur to me that it had happened to others. It felt like it was happening to me all over again,” Amarjit says. “We can understand the grief of the people left behind. Gradually, we will hear their stories. But their pain…You can’t explain it.”
Their daughter Jasleen was 10 and son Ashamdeep just seven.
The entire month of June rekindles painful memories of the bombing and Ahmedabad crash felt like fresh wounds. A month before the fateful day, the family vacationed in the US full of laughter, dreams and travel plans not knowing that their world is about to come down crashing.
Her son, Ashamdeep, now Captain Ashamdeep Singh Bhinder, is a pilot with Air India — he flies a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the same make that crashed in Ahmedabad.
Amarjit knew that after her husband's death she has to live on for her children, hence she took managerial job at Air India to support her children. She managed to persuade her daughter to take up a field other than aviation, however her son remained adamant and chose to be a pilot continuing his father's legacy.
“He wanted to be a pilot from the age of two. I couldn’t stop him,” she says. Her daughter is married to a Singapore Airlines pilot.
40 years on, the family's wait for justice still prevails.
In 2004, Amarjit travelled to Canada to attend court hearings. “Both Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri walked free. We never got justice,” she says.
“Other families still hope, still press for more investigation. But I don’t think anything concrete will happen now. It’s been 40 years,” she says.
- PTC NEWS
