Some survived blast

Press, 20 September 1985, Page 6

Some survived blast

NZPA-Reuter Cork Some of the 329 people who died when an Air-India Boeing 747 crashed off Ireland in June were alive when they hit the water, an inquest heard yesterday. But the inquest failed to shed any new light on what caused one of the world’s worst air disasters. Two Sikh groups reportedly have said that they put a bomb aboard the plane, flying between Montreal and London. Examination of the plane’s flight-recorders and records have failed to establish that a bomb caused the crash. Ireland’s State Pathologist, Dr John Harbison, said that eight of the 131 bodies recovered from the sea had

been found during post-mor-tem examination to have died from drowning, indicating they were still breathing when they hit the water. Most of the victims had died from external and internal injuries suffered either inside the plane, flying through the air, or as they hit the sea, the inquest heard. Dr Harbison confirmed from another pathologist that there was no evidence from examining the bodies of an explosion in the passenger section. But he did not rule out the bomb theory entirely. It was a large aircraft and examiners had had only a limited number of bodies.

“On the evidence at present available, there does

not appear to have been a bomb in close proximity of people we examined.” The pathologist, who told the inquest that he was familiar with the effects of guerrilla bombs, said that there was no evidence of burn marks, shrapnel injuries or blast damage, which one would expect to find after an explosion. Samples of tissue taken from the bodies of some of the victims were still being examined, he said. Earlier, a top Irish pathologist, Professor C. T. Doyle, said that most of the victims had died from injuries consistent with a sudden deceleration. Death in the great majority of cases was “virtually instantaneous,” he said.