A former Canadian spy has submitted before the Air India inquiry commission that he had to fight for two months before the spy agency finally agreed to put a key Sikh activist under physical surveillance in the weeks leading up to the 1985 Air India bombing.

Ray Kobzey testified before Justice John Major, former Supreme Court judge, heading the commission that in those days the service still gave priority to Cold War targets such as suspected Soviet spies.

Kobzey started trying to get surveillance of Talwinder Singh Parmar, the prime suspect in the Kanisha bombing, in April but did not succeed until early June. Even then, the surveillance was called off before the actual attack on Air India took place.

The problem, according to Kobzey, was that the Canadian Security and Intelligence Services (CSIS) just did not have enough people to trail everyone that investigators wanted to follow.

Parmar, leader of the militant Babar Khalsa group, was shot dead in a police encounter years later.

The inquiry, headed by former Supreme Court justice John Major, is examining whether Canadian police and security officers did all they could to head off the bombing.