The Air India inquiry heard Monday from two witnesses who claim the prime suspect in the 1985 bombing confessed his involvement in the attack while being questioned by Indian police in 1992.

But Indian interrogators were told by Talwinder Singh Parmar, who was head of the militant Sikh separatist group Babbar Khalsa, that others played a more central role in the attack that killed 329 people in June 1985.

The claims were made public Monday in documents provided by Sarabjit Singh and Rajvinder Singh Bains, both of the Punjab Human Rights Organization, which conducted its own investigation into the bombing two years ago.

But they were taken with a grain of salt by the head of the inquiry, former Supreme Court justice John Major, who noted that just because the documents were entered in evidence didn't mean he was making a judgment on their credibility.

"It's a document which doesn't seem to have an author," said the CBC's Terry Milewski.

"All we have is this translation from Punjabi by somebody who says they got this statement from a policeman who's not going to testify," he said. "The sourcing is very weak."

Bains told the inquiry that his organization tried to bring the information to Canadian police in December 2005, and that RCMP didn't seem too interested in it at first. 

Bains said he and Singh didn't meet with Canadian authorities until this year, and that their impression following a June meeting was that police already had the information.

RCMP Insp. Lorne Schwartz, who worked on the Air India task force in Vancouver, testified the Mounties were aware of the supposed Parmar confession as early as May 1997, when they were approached by "various sources" telling much the same story outlined Monday.

The RCMP spent several years investigating the matter, the inquiry heard. Schwartz said that he followed up on the information even though Parmar's confession to police may have been obtained under "physical or mental torture."

Parmar never convicted in bombing

Parmar was arrested in British Columbia shortly after the bombing, but was never convicted in the downing of Air India Flight 182. He left Canada several years later and was killed by Indian police in a shootout in October 1992.

Parmar is alleged to have told Indian police that the bomb plot was not his idea, and that he was drawn into it by Lakhbir Singh Brar, former head of the International Sikh Youth Federation and Inderjit Singh Reyat, the only person ever convicted in a Canadian court.

In documents submitted to the inquiry, Parmar is quoted as agreeing to provide the dynamite sticks.

The inquiry heard that Brar was identified as Mr. X — as he was then known to police — who accompanied Parmar and Reyat to Duncan, B.C., to test explosives in the woods a few days before the bombing of Flight 182, the inquiry heard.

But his physical description didn't match the one provided by a CSIS surveillance team, Schwartz said. There were also other discrepancies in the information from the purported confession and details the Mounties had already from their sources, the inquiry heard.

Brar was deported from Canada in the 1990s, and the RCMP interviewed him only in 2001 when they tracked him down. By that time he was no longer considered a suspect but police still wanted to interview him.

The inquiry has no mandate to lay criminal blame for the bombing, investigate the actions of the Punjabi police or revisit Canadian criminal prosecutions already concluded.

It has focused on issues relevant to Canadian authorities, including the turf wars between the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service that hampered efforts to bring the Air India bombers to justice.

Only one man, Reyat, has been convicted in the incident. Two others, Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, were acquitted in a trial in Vancouver two years ago. All were Parmar associates.

With files from the Canadian Press