Calls for a public inquiry into the investigation of the Air India bombing are growing louder, as some relatives of the flight's 329 victims say they think justice would have been swifter if most passengers had been white.

"Had this been a tragedy that affected mainstream, white Anglo-Saxon Canadians, I think the response would have been very different," said Lata Pada, who lost her husband and two children when Air India Flight 182 exploded on June 23, 1985.

She wasn't the only one to call on Thursday for a probe of the 20-year, $130-million investigation into the bombing, a day after two Sikh men, Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, were acquitted on charges of conspiracy and murder.

Susheel Gupta, who lost his mother on the Air India flight, is among those demanding a public inquiry.
Susheel Gupta, who lost his mother on the Air India flight, is among those demanding a public inquiry.

"I agree completely with Lata," said Sanjay Lazar, who lost both his parents and a younger sister.

Lazar said he believes the government perceived the bombing as an Indian tragedy, noting that no one in the Canadian government sent condolences to the victims' families at the time.

Instead Brian Mulroney, who was then prime minister, sent his sympathies to the prime minister of India – even though the vast majority of passengers were Canadian citizens.

"Look at the amount of time that passed after the accident [before] the investigation began, I mean, really began gathering evidence, " Lazar said.

"How much of it was destroyed? How much of it never came to light?"

Susheel Gupta, an Ottawa lawyer who was 12 when his mother died on Flight 182, said these issues and more could be scrutinized by a public inquiry.

"We would bring up all the facts, all the errors, all the mistakes that were made," he said.

RCMP calls racism accusation absurd

As the court heard, RCMP investigators initially struggled to surmount cultural problems. The force had almost no officers of East Indian origin and others who weren't familiar with the Sikh community had trouble telling some key suspects apart.

They were also impeded by the lack of Punjabi-speaking translators.

But a spokesman for the RCMP, which alone spent more than $45 million on the investigation, said that to claim the problems add up to racism is absurd.

"We spent countless thousands of hours," said Sgt. John Ward.

"We travelled the world to try to gather the evidence we needed and we did that, notwithstanding who was on that plane. All we needed to know is they were Canadians."

Back in the early 1980s, journalist Salim Jiwa was one of the few people tracking Sikh extremism. Because they had scant sources of their own in the Indian community, the Mounties turned to him for information.

"It wasn't that the RCMP were racists," said Jiwa, a journalist with the Vancouver Province newspaper. "It was simply of the failure to understand that different cultures think differently and operate differently."

McLellan offers to meet with families

Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan has resisted calls for an inquiry, saying she doubts it would uncover any new information.

However, she offered an olive branch to the families of the victims on Thursday, saying she would be happy to walk them through the improvements that have been made to the country's police and security forces since 1985.

"I would certainly be happy to sit down with families and representatives ... as well as my officials from CSIS, the RCMP, from my department, to take them through what has changed in 20 years," said McLellan.

But Hari Venkatacharya, whose wife lost her two daughters on the flight, said all Canadians should insist on an inquiry, for the sake of the country's international reputation.

"We are being criticized as a country for being weak on terrorism. Is that the reputation we want to hold up? Because quite honestly this is a horrible day for all Canadians."