Canada's intelligence agency, Canadian SecurityIntelligence Service (CSIS), has said allegations that one of its agents may have known about the Air India bombing before the plane blew up off the Irish coast in June 1985 were "absurd."
Reports in the media on Monday said that a CSIS agent had infiltrated a Sikh militant group prior to the bombing and may have known about the plan.
The reports, citing Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) interrogation files, allege that CSIS pulled out its mole - named as Surjan Singh Gill - just three days before Air India Flight 182 exploded and then hid his activities from the RCMP.
Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri are currently on trial in Vancouver for their alleged role in the destruction of Air India Flight 182 and the murder of all 329 people on board.
According to an RCMP officer who was interrogating one of the two defendants at the time, CSIS destroyed some wiretapped phone conversations to cover up its knowledge of the planned bombing.
In a statement issued late on Monday, the spy agency said: "CSIS's role is to provide intelligence to the government to prevent acts of terrorism from occurring in or originating from Canada.
"If CSIS had had any information which could have prevented the disaster, it would have provided it to the government and the police.
"Any suggestion that CSIS would not have done everything in its power to prevent such a tragedy from occurring is absurd," it said.
In the Canadian House of Commons on Monday, several opposition members pressed the government to hold an inquiry into the allegations, a call which was firmly rejected by Solicitor General Wayne Easter.
Meanwhile, the trial of the two men before a judge in British Columbia's Supreme Court will deal with procedural issues before a summer-long break.
The prosecution is trying to prove that Bagri and Malik conspired to plant the bomb on the plane as part of a terrorist attack on the Indian government.
At the time, India was engaged in a violent dispute withextremist Sikh separatists.
AFP