40 years after Air India bombing, son's grief fuels his work in counterterrorism and victim support

Susheel Gupta was 12 years old when his mother, Ramwati Gupta, boarded Air India Flight 182.

It was supposed to be a special summer for the Ottawa boy, whose family had planned a trip to India to visit relatives. He was originally meant to fly ahead of his parents so that he could spend some extra time with his grandparents.

But his Grade 7 graduation ceremony was coming up, and he didn't want to miss it.

"Had I gone early, I would have missed Grade 7 graduation, so I nagged and nagged my parents," Gupta told CBC's The Early Edition.

Ultimately, the family changed their travel plans, and Gupta's mother flew ahead, with the intention that he and his father would join her a few weeks later.

"She was travelling on my plane ticket and my seat," he said.

That flight never made it. On June 23, 1985, Air India Flight 182 exploded off the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 people onboard. Around the same time, a bomb exploded at Japan's Narita Airport, killing two baggage handlers transferring a Vancouver suitcase to an Air India flight.

It is considered the worst mass murder in modern Canadian history.

Monday marks 40 years since that tragedy. Gupta, now a senior RCMP official working in counterterrorism, said the pain never fully goes away.

"I've got two little girls and not a day goes by that I don't wish my mom were alive so they could meet her."

But Gupta says it wasn't just the loss that devastated families. It was also the way they were treated.

In the hours after the bombing, Gupta remembers his family scrambling for answers but facing a void of official information.

"There used to be something called a phone book … and my father was trying to reach government agencies," he said. "There was no one answering any of our calls.

"We didn't know if there was a rescue mission or a recovery mission."