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Tag Archives: Government of India


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Birth of Richard Sankey, Officer in the Madras Engineer Group

Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Hieram Sankey KCB, officer in the Madras Engineer Group in the East India Company‘s army in British India, is born on March 22, 1829, at Rockwell Castle, County Tipperary.

Sankey is the fourth son of Eleanor and Matthew Sankey. His mother is herself from a family of military men, her father being Colonel Henry O’Hara, J.P of O’Hara Broom, County Antrim. His father is a barrister at Bawnmore, County Cork and Modeshil, County Tipperary. He does his schooling at Rev. Flynn’s School on Harcourt Street in Dublin and enters the East India Company’s Addiscombe Military Seminary at Addiscombe, Surrey in 1845. At Addiscombe he is awarded for his excellence at painting.

Sankey is commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Madras Engineer Group in November 1846 and is then trained in military engineering with the Royal Engineers at Chatham, Kent from January 1, 1847, holding temporary rank as an ensign in the British Army. He then arrives in India in November 1848. After two years of service at Mercatur, he officiates in 1850 as Superintending Engineer at Nagpur. During this time, he makes a small collection of fossils of Glossopteris from the Nagpur district and writes a paper on the geology of the region in 1854. The collection is moved from the Museum of Practical Geology to the British Museum in 1880.

In 1856, Sankey is promoted as the Superintendent of the East Coast Canal at Madras. In May 1857, he is promoted Under-Secretary of the Public Works Department under Col. William Erskine Baker in Calcutta. During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, he is commissioned as the Captain of the Calcutta Cavalry Volunteers but is soon despatched to Allahabad where he leads the construction of several embankments and bridges across the Yamuna and Ganges. He is involved in the construction of shelters to advancing troops along the Grand Trunk Road to aid the quelling of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. He arrives in course of this work at Cawnpore (now Kanpur) a day before the Second Battle of Cawnpore. He also is involved in crucial civil works that aid the quelling of the rebellion by bridging the Ghaghara and Gomti rivers at Gorakhpur and Phulpur that enable the Gurkha regiment to cross these rivers.

Sankey receives several commendations from his commanders here and later in the taking of the fort at Jumalpur, Khandua nalla and Qaisar Bagh, vital actions in the breaking of the Siege of Lucknow. For his actions at Jumalpur he is recommended for the Victoria Cross, although he does not receive this honour. He receives a medal for the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and is promoted to second captain on August 27, 1858, and given brevet promotion to major the following day for his services in the quelling of the rebellion. He is sent to the Nilgiris due to ill-health during this time.

Sankey spends a year in Burma as the executive engineer and Superintendent of the jail at Moulmein. On June 29, 1861, he is promoted to substantive captain and is posted as the Garrison Engineer at Fort William, Calcutta and later as the assistant to Chief Engineer, Mysore until 1864, when he is made the Chief Engineer. During this period, he creates a system within the irrigation department to deal with old Indian water catchment systems, surveying the catchment area and determining the area drained and the flows involved. Due to the reorganisation of the armed forces following the assumption of Crown rule in India he is transferred to the Royal Engineers on April 29, 1862.

In 1870, at the request of the Victorian Colonial Government in Australia, in view of his experience with hydrological studies in Mysore, Sankey is invited to be Chairman of the Board of Enquiry on Victorian Water Supply. During this visit, he also gives evidence to the Victorian Select Committee on Railways, as well as reports on the Yarra River Floods, and the Coliban Water Supply, and later contributes to the report on the North West Canal. While in Australia, he is also invited to the colony of South Australia to report on the water supply of Adelaide.

Sankey is appointed as an under-secretary to the Government of India in 1877, which earns him the Afghanistan Medal. In 1878, he is promoted as the Secretary in the public works department at Madras and is promoted substantive colonel on December 30. He is appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath on July 25, 1879, and also commands the Royal Engineers on the advance from Kandahar to Kabul during the Second Anglo-Afghan War. For about five years he is in Madras where he becomes a member of the legislative council in Madras and is elected as a Fellow of the University of Madras. He also helps in the creation and improvements of the Marina, the gardens and the Government House grounds. He is promoted major general on June 4, 1883, and retires from the army on January 11, 1884, with the honorary rank of lieutenant general. He also receives the distinguished service award in India.

After retirement, Sankey returns to Ireland, where he becomes the Chairman of the Board of Works. He is promoted Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath on May 25, 1892, for his work in Ireland. He also undertakes projects in Mexico. Later he settles in London where he dies at St. George’s Hospital on November 11, 1908, and is interred at Hove, East Sussex.

Sankey is memorialised in Phoenix Park, Dublin. A circle of trees bears the name Sankey’s Wood. A plaque dated 1894 lies half-hidden in the undergrowth there.


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The Bombing of Air India Flight 182

air-india-182

Air India Flight 182, an Air India flight operating on the Montreal, Canada–London, U.K.–Delhi, India route, is destroyed by a bomb on June 23, 1985, at an altitude of 31,000 feet and crashes into the Atlantic Ocean while in Irish airspace.

It is the first bombing of a 747 jumbo jetliner. A total of 329 people are killed, including 268 Canadian citizens, 27 Britons, and 24 Indians. The majority of the victims were Canadian citizens of Indian ancestry. The incident is the largest mass murder in Canadian history. It is the deadliest terrorist attack involving an airplane until the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States in 2001. The bombing of Air India 182 occurs at the same time as the Narita Airport bombing in Japan. Investigators believe that the two plots are linked, and that those responsible are aiming for a double bombing. However, the bomb at Narita explodes before it can be loaded onto a plane.

At 07:14:01 GMT, the crew of Air India 182 “squawked 2005,” a routine activation of its aviation transponder, as requested by Shannon International Airport Air Traffic Control (ATC). The plane then disappears from radar. A bomb in a Sanyo tuner in a suitcase in the forward cargo hold explodes while the plane is at 31,000 feet at 51°3.6′N 12°49′W. It causes rapid decompression and the break-up of the aircraft in mid-air. The wreckage settles in 6,700-feet deep water off the southwest coast of Ireland, 120 miles offshore of County Cork. No “mayday” call is received by Shannon ATC. ATC asks aircraft in the area to try to contact Air India, to no avail. By 07:30:00 GMT, ATC has declared an emergency and requests nearby cargo ships and the Irish Naval Service vessel LÉ Aisling to begin searching for the aircraft.

The bomb kills all 22 crew and 307 passengers. One hundred thirty-two bodies are recovered. The remaining 197 are lost at sea. Eight bodies exhibit “flail pattern” injuries, indicating that they had exited the aircraft before it hit the water. This is a sign that the aircraft had broken up in mid-air. Twenty-six bodies show signs of hypoxia (lack of oxygen). Twenty-five, mostly victims who were seated near windows, show signs of explosive decompression. Twenty-three have signs of “injuries from a vertical force.” Twenty-one passengers are found with little or no clothing.

Canadian law enforcement determines that the main suspects in the bombing are members of the Sikh militant group Babbar Khalsa. The attack is thought to be a retaliation against India for the operation carried out by the Indian Army Operation Blue Star to flush out several hundred Sikh militants who were within the premises of the Golden temple and the surrounding structures ordered by the Indian government, headed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Though a handful of members are arrested and tried, Inderjit Singh Reyat, a Canadian national, remains the only person convicted of involvement in the bombing. Singh pleads guilty in 2003 to manslaughter. He is sentenced to 15 years in prison for building the bombs that exploded aboard Flight 182 and at Narita.

The subsequent investigation and prosecution lasts almost twenty years and is the most expensive trial in Canadian history, costing nearly CAD 130 million. The Governor General-in-Council in 2006 appoints the former Supreme Court Justice John C. Major to conduct a commission of inquiry. His report is completed and released on June 17, 2010. It concludes that a “cascading series of errors” by the government of Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) had allowed the terrorist attack to take place.