It was at a Sikh temple in southeast Calgary, in the summer of 1984, that about 20 Canadian Sikhs first heard the cry for Air- India planes to "fall from the sky." The comments came from Talwinder Singh Parmar in a fiery speech, one of his first since returning from Germany where he had been detained for a year as the Indian government fought unsuccessfully to extradite him on three murder charges. Hundreds were packed into the temple that day, but a much smaller group gathered upstairs afterward to hear the founder of one of the most militant Sikh separatist groups -- the Babbar Khalsa, or Tigers of the True Faith -- in a more intimate setting. Mr. Parmar, a Burnaby millworker turned priest and militant, insisted that the Indian government must be punished for its attack a month earlier on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Sikhism's holiest shrine. One of those in attendance suggested a boycott so that Air-India would stop flying to Canada. But the conversation soon turned to a more violent strategy. Another man said they should get missiles and try to hit the weekly Air-India flight from the ground as it left Toronto or Montreal. But Mr. Parmar said neither suggestion was right. "We'll think of something. We will make a plan," he pledged. That plan would unfold over the next several months as a core group of B.C. Sikh separatists plotted a monstrous conspiracy to destroy two Air-India passenger jets heading in opposite directions around the globe.

Royal Air Force crewman Mick Hardwick holds a Cabbage Patch Doll at Cork, Ireland, airport on June 24, 1985. The doll was one of the few items found off the Irish coast at the site of the Air-India crash

Irish soldiers from the city of Cork carry the body of one of the Air-India victims recovered from the Atlantic Ocean off the southern coast of Ireland.

Though things didn't go exactly as planned, 331 people were killed in the bombings on June 23, 1985. One bomb exploded at Narita Airport in Japan, killing two baggage handlers. An hour later, Air-India Flight 182 fell from the sky off the coast of Ireland. All 329 aboard perished.

For a decade and a half, the suspects have believed they were going to get away with it. They often confided to those close to them that they would never be charged.

Finally, after 15 years, the RCMP's Air-India Task Force has charged two B.C. Sikh separatists with the Air-India and Narita bombings, as well as with the attempted murder in 1988 of a prominent Sikh newspaper publisher.

Vancouver businessman Ripudaman Singh Malik, who once received a $1-million loan from the Vancouver branch of the State Bank of India, is alleged to have got the money together for the plot. He and Ajaib Singh Bagri, an alleged supporter of Babbar Khalsa, are charged with masterminding and executing the world's deadliest airline attack.

Many others were involved or at least had prior knowledge of the murderous plan. But police have laid charges only against those believed to be behind the conspiracy.

The suspects seemed almost careless in the weeks leading up to the bombing. Mr. Parmar travelled openly to Duncan, B.C., with another Babbar Khalsa supporter, to meet Inderjit Singh Reyat, an electrician who was later convicted in the Narita bombing, to do some test explosions. They were all being followed by Canadian secret agents, who heard the explosions in the woods.

Within two weeks of the bombing, a final planning meeting was held at a Sikh temple in Seattle. Both of the men charged were allegedly present.

As the bombing day drew nearer, everyone performed their part. Reyat is alleged to have constructed the two bombs in Duncan. They were placed inside Sanyo tuners he bought at the local Woolworths.

On the evening of June 21, the bombs were transported to Vancouver inside two suitcases. When Reyat's unsuspecting brother refused to allow the suspicious luggage into his home, Hardial Singh Johal, an activist at the Ross Street temple, is alleged to have taken them to the Vancouver elementary school where he was custodian. They were left in the boiler room until 4 a.m.

Meanwhile in Vancouver, the others were making their arrangements.

On June 19, the tickets used to check in both bombs were booked over the phone in a call to the Canadian Pacific downtown ticket office. They were picked up in person the next day by a man in a mustard-coloured turban, who paid with $3,005 cash.

The ticket buyer left two local contact numbers with the agent. One had been Mr. Johal's home number until several months earlier. The other was the main number at the Ross Street temple.

Agents from the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service did their best to keep track of the Sikh separatists, whom they viewed as a threat to national security. In addition to following Mr. Parmar to Duncan, they monitored a flurry of phone calls among Reyat, Mr. Parmar and Mr. Johal during the period leading to the bombings.

Asked about the calls recently, Mr. Johal claimed he could not remember why he spoke to the other two, but that it was probably related to a libel suit they were all involved in against Sikh publisher Tara Singh Hayer.

And he insisted the fact his old number was used proved he hadn't been involved. "Why somebody put the number, I don't know. It cannot be my friend. It must be my enemy who put my phone number there," he said.

The first suitcase was checked in at Vancouver airport at about 8:30 a.m. on June 22, 1985. The second bag was checked in at about 1 p.m.

The delivery man is alleged to have been Balwant Singh Bhandher, with whom Mr. Parmar had stayed in Calgary months earlier when the plot was first discussed. Mr. Bhandher is now a Surrey resident and a director of the controversial Khalsa School.

Mr. Bhandher is said to have been assigned the deliveries after Surjan Gill, who once opened a Khalistani "consulate" in Vancouver, backed out at the 11th hour.

At least two of the suspects are believed to have followed the delivery man in separate cars. When the bombs were successfully checked in, a call was placed to Parmar's house.

"The sweets are gone," a suspect said in Punjabi.

Mr. Johal was seen at the airport that day. He even got into a conversation with Daljit Singh Grewal, a Surrey man he had known for years, who was travelling to India via the targeted flight.

Mr. Johal suggested that Mr. Grewal should be boycotting Air-India and should change his ticket, but Mr. Grewal said that wasn't practical. Mr. Grewal's family was there to send him off. None of them knew it would be the last time they would see him.

Later that evening, more than a dozen of Mr. Parmar's devotees sat in the living room of his palatial Burnaby home, decorated with Sikh gurus and photos of bloodied bodies -- "martyrs" -- from the 1984 Amritsar raid.

Confirmation finally came in a call from Toronto. The caller, a prominent member of the International Sikh Youth Federation, said the Air-India flight that would explode hours later had left, its deadly cargo aboard.

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Both Mr. Malik and Mr. Bagri were at Mr. Parmar's house that night. Those gathered in the room that Saturday evening were members of at least four separatist organizations bent on carving up India's Punjab to form an independent Sikh country they called Khalistan.

Most were from Mr. Parmar's extremist sect Babbar Khalsa or its religious affiliate, the Akhand Kirtani Jatha. But at least one person present was with the more moderate World Sikh Organization; others were from the Sikh Youth Federation.

At about 10 p.m. on June 25, the first bomb exploded at Japan's Narita Airport as a suitcase was being transferred from a Canadian Pacific flight from Vancouver. Two baggage handlers were killed.

Less than an hour later, Air-India Flight 182 suddenly disappeared off the radar screen.

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Officially, the terrorist plot had been clandestine, but around Vancouver word leaked out before the bombing that something was up with Air-India.

In 1987, The Vancouver Sun had uncovered information of at least two warnings of the plot to CSIS and the RCMP 10 months before the ill-fated flight.

And there were other warnings, right up until weeks before the Air-India jet crashed into the Atlantic.

In September, 1984, Vancouver liquor store employee Harmail Singh Grewal tried to bargain down his sentence on a theft and fraud conviction by offering information to the CSIS and the RCMP about a plot to put a bomb aboard an Air-India flight out of Montreal, Grewal's lawyer, George Angelomatis, said years later.

But the deal fell through after Grewal was dismissed by authorities as "unreliable."

A Toronto resident, Paul Besso, also claimed he had warned the RCMP about the bomb attack two weeks before it happened.

Indian government officials also warned Canada that Sikh separatists might have been planning to target Indian diplomats and Air-India flights as part of their terrorist campaign.

The rumours and allegations were swirling around the Punjabi market at the unofficial level, too.

In the months before the bombing, the word circulated quietly to boycott Air-India. Some understood it would be physically attacked. Others thought the boycott was the standard economic protest against a legitimate target -- the national airline of India.

Balbir Singh Hera confirmed this week that his good friend Amarjit Pawa, of Friendly Travels, had changed Mr. Hera's son's booking to India for no apparent reason.

"He can't go on Air-India," Mr. Pawa said. "I have booked a Japan Airlines flight."

Mr. Pawa, who died in his 50s about six years ago, was close to many Sikh militants. He did a brisk business with the Ross Street temple, making thousands off ticket sales every year for visiting separatist leaders.

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While several B.C. families struggled in grief, Toronto and Montreal -- where hundreds of families of those who perished resided -- became the centres of the support groups for those who lost loved ones.

The contrast between the two parts of the country was great. Within a year of the crash, a memorial was built at Queen's Park in Toronto where relatives and political leaders could gather to mark the anniversary of the terrible attack.

But in Vancouver where the bomb parts were purchased and assembled, the suspects and their supporters set the tone of public reaction for months, if not years, after the bombing. There is still no memorial in the city to the victims.

But Indo-Canadians in B.C. have fought back in recent years to rescue their religious institutions and community's name from those who almost destroyed them.

It is this shift in attitude against the separatist movement that has likely contributed to the success of the Air-India investigation.

Hours after the crash, there were whispers in the city of who was responsible for Air-India tragedy.

But many feared reprisals and were reluctant to come forward with information. After all, Vancouver has been the site of more shootings, attacks and murders of the opponents of Sikh separatism than in any other part of Canada.

Even Ujjal Dosanjh, the B.C. Premier, was beaten up when he publicly opposed the extremists as a moderate lawyer and writer in 1985. As a result there have been few prosecutions.

In Mr. Dosanjh's case, a man was charged and acquitted. No one else was ever prosecuted.

Still, there was optimism for a time, especially when the RCMP raided the homes of Mr. Parmar, Reyat, Mr. Bagri and others in November, 1985.

The police said the raid was connected to Air-India. But the only charges ever laid were minor ones against Mr. Parmar and Reyat. Mr. Parmar's charges were dropped, and Reyat got off with a $2,000 fine.

In June, 1996, Mr. Parmar, Mr. Bagri and other Babbar Khalsa members were again arrested in raids across Canada on charges of a wide-ranging conspiracy to commit terrorism in India. A year later, all the charges were thrown out because police did not have proper authorization for the wiretaps they had planted.

Reyat moved his family to England in February, 1988. Mr. Parmar slipped out of the country a few months later to set up a base in Pakistan.

Though Reyat was eventually charged, extradited and convicted of manslaughter in the Narita bombing, many B.C. Sikhs remained convinced the people who blew up the plane would get away with it.

By the late 1980s, the police investigation had seemed to almost peter out -- no longer were officers stopping by to question people. The Khalistanis appeared to have solid control of the two main B.C. temples -- Ross Street in south Vancouver and Surrey's Guru Nanak Gurdwara.

There were calls from politicians and victims' families in Ontario for an end to the criminal probe and an immediate royal commission into what went wrong. There were accusations the police had bungled the investigation, allowed Talwinder Parmar to escape and clashed with CSIS agents, who by that time had taken a lot of heat for the erasure of a number of tapes of wiretap conversations between the suspects.

Between 1989 and 1992, the RCMP team was headed by Fred Maile, an experienced homicide investigator who was key in the capture of child killer Clifford Olson.

Mr. Maile was instrumental in convincing RCMP brass in Ottawa to offer the $1-million reward that was announced on May 31, 1995, on the 10th anniversary of the bombing.

If it wasn't the $1-million reward that helped kick-start the investigation, it was the influx of new blood on the task force. The number of investigators rose from a low of about six officers to 20 full-time staff.

By this time, the climate in the local Sikh community had changed dramatically as well. Support for the Sikh separatist movement had plummeted. People were impatient with the tactics of those calling themselves leaders. Several appeared not to have paid jobs, but were living in impressive houses. There were allegations that more than $800,000 donated for the cause had disappeared.

Sikh Youth Federation leaders told a newspaper reporter that their movement was non-violent, but they were unable to explain comments by Mr. Bagri's associate Mr. Parmar a week earlier published in Des Pardes, a Punjbai weekly out of Southall, England.

From his hideout in Pakistan, Mr. Parmar said anyone who flew Air-India was suicidal.

"When bodies burn and fall to the ground, it will be their own fault. It will not be the fault of the Sikhs. It will be the fault of those countries that do not help us," he said.

At the same time as local Indo-Canadians were growing weary with the Sikh separatists, the Indian government tried to get rid of the problem once and for all.

Punjabi police were ordered to begin a serious offensive against the remaining Khalistani militant groups, including Mr. Parmar's.

They arrested Gurdeep Singh Sivia, a key Babbar Khalsa leader from England, who agreed to co-operate. Unbeknownst to his comrades, Mr. Sivia set them up by organizing a meeting of leaders in Ludhiana, Punjab. When they arrived at the meeting, police were waiting and captured all of them, including Sukhdev Singh Babbar, one of the most radical and influential leaders.

Mr. Parmar, who didn't get along well with Mr. Sivia, didn't attend the meeting but was arrested later in the year. Most of the militant leaders, including Mr. Parmar and Mr. Babbar, were tortured and eventually killed in custody.

The political shift in India was swifter than the shift in Canada.

But by 1995, moderate Sikhs were contesting temple elections successfully in Vancouver and Surrey for the first time in a decade.

Separatists, including the Air-India suspects, responded by touting the new-found religious line that using tables and chairs in local Sikh temple dining halls -- as they had done when they controlled temples -- was now an abomination to the faith.

Led by the International Sikh Youth Federation leaders, they marched in to Surrey's Guru Nanak temple in December, 1996, and smashed the tables, chanting "Khalistan Zindabad," or "Long live Khalistan."

A month later, they returned and in the bloody melee that ensued several moderates were injured, including one who was critically stabbed with a kirpan, the ceremonial dagger Sikhs carry. Several federation members, including Reyat's cousin, were charged. But, except for one minor weapons charge, all were acquitted.

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One of the key people in changing attitudes in the Vancouver Sikh community was Tara Singh Hayer. The outspoken Punjabi publisher of the Indo-Canadian Times had been a Khalistan supporter in 1984. He had even praised some of the people who plotted to murder him years later.

But after Air-India and other acts of violence, Mr. Hayer became one of the first prominent Khalistanis to turn against the main militant groups -- the Babbar Khalsa and the International Sikh Youth Federation. He continued to believe in Khalistan for several more years afterward, but began to advocate a more moderate, democratic solution.

With his inside knowledge Mr. Hayer could attack Mr. Parmar and his supporters with devastating accuracy. And they started to retaliate.

In 1986, a bomb was left outside Hayer's Surrey office, but was not detonated.

Threats against Mr. Hayer's life intensified in the summer of 1988. But even Mr. Hayer was shocked when a 17-year-old named Harkirat Singh Bagga showed up calmly one day around noon and shot him several times.

He was left paralyzed from the waist down and in constant pain, but resumed his role at his newspaper. He also began to rethink his position on Khalistan and decided it was no longer a possibility.

His old friend Tarsem Singh Purewal, publisher of Des Prades in England -- the newspaper that was so sympathetic to Mr. Parmar that it could get into his secret Pakistani training camps -- also began to rethink his support for Parmar and others.

By 1995, Mr. Purewal was writing critically of his old friends. He was said to be planning an exposé on their misuse of funds when he was assassinated in January of that year.

With Mr. Purewal dead, Mr. Hayer knew he had to inform police of some information the two men shared that he had kept quiet for a decade.

He contacted the RCMP's Air-India Task Force, and in October, 1995, provided a statement regarding his knowledge of the bombing 10 years earlier.

In a police statement written on Oct. 15, 1995, Mr. Hayer explained that in late 1985, he was with Purewal at the offices of Des Pardes.

There were a few others present -- Avtar Singh Janndialvi, Pritam Singh Sidhu and a part-time employee of Mr. Purewal's newspaper, Manmohan Singh Bajaj.

It was 7 p.m. in the evening. They were talking about Khalistan and community politics.

Mr. Bagri, of Kamloops, Mr. Parmar's first lieutenant, arrived at the office in the early evening. At that point, Mr. Purewal was a Mr. Babbar intimate.

Hayer said Mr. Purewal and Mr. Bagri went behind a room divider and talked about the Air-India bombing. According to Mr. Hayer, Mr. Bagri went on about how the plane was late and was supposed to have blown up on the ground at Heathrow airport, in London. Mr. Bagri claimed that day that they hadn't intended to kill so many.

Aaccording to Mr. Hayer, Mr. Bagri said the bags were to be carried to the airport by Surjan Singh Gill, but that he had chickened out and left them with no one to do the job.

After the bombing the perpetrators had talked of killing Mr. Gill, Mr. Bagri is alleged to have said, but decided against it because it would raise too much suspicion.

Mr. Hayer said he and the others present heard everything.

After Mr. Hayer became a potential witness, the Air-India Task Force installed security cameras in his house, one hidden in the flower box on a balcony overlooking the front entrance to the house. Another one faced out into the backyard. But none was placed in the garage where Mr. Hayer would get in and out of his specially designed black Cadillac with the special hand controls.

That is where he was gunned down on Nov. 18, 1998, three years after providing his information on the bombing to the RCMP. Both Mr. Purewal's and Mr. Hayer's murders remain unsolved.

The moderate movement in B.C. would not have been as successful without Mr. Hayer. His provocative criticisms outraged the few remaining diehard Khalistanis and encouraged many Sikhs who had fallen away from the temples to get involved and fight back.

Winning over the temples was one thing. Seeing the suspects in Air-India charged was more difficult. Police seemed on the verge of making arrests several times, and then ... nothing.

As the years passed, the suspects, for the most part, remained close. They would have meetings in Surrey's Khalsa School, often late at night in a room surrounded by other rooms so that the lights could not be detected by anyone outside.

At other times the meetings were held at Mr. Malik's house, again at unusual hours and sometimes under the guise of prayer meetings to avoid detection. But they were said to be nervous whenever news reports on the bombing hit the newspapers or television.

Despite being the head of a credit union, two schools, a radio station, two charitable societies and several companies, Mr. Malik was virtually unknown outside the Sikh community.

But his anonymity began to collapse in December, 1997, when allegations arose of financial mismanagement at his Khalsa School, and sex-abuse charges were laid against a school priest. As well, a convicted hijacker with a deportation order against him was found living in the school basement. As well, links were made between the school and the families of the only two identified Air-India bombing suspects at the time -- Mr. Parmar and Reyat.

The allegations led to at least three criminal investigations. And for the first time, community members were standing up and criticizing Mr. Malik.

More investigations followed. Last summer, the RCMP launched a probe into the Khalsa Credit Union, on which Mr. Malik sat as a board member. Eventually the credit union was taken over by the Financial Institutions Commission, which criticized Mr. Malik's conduct in a scathing report.

Just this week, Mr. Malik won an appeal of the FICom decision to appoint an administrator to the credit union. The ruling that returned the credit union to Mr. Malik did so despite stating within it, for the first time in a public document, that "he has not been cleared in relation to the Air-India bombing."

Asked this week about the reference to being an Air-India suspect, Mr. Malik said he never used to think he was one, but that news reports in recent years had made him think maybe he was.

He refused to comment further on the subject.

But Mr. Malik had to know his empire was crumbling.

Mr. Johal, always a staunch ally, called for his resignation at the credit union and ran against him for the board last June.

Even some members of Mr. Parmar's family split with him.

Kulwarn Singh Parmar, Talwinder's brother, attacked Mr. Malik publicly, provoking Mr. Malik to collect letters from prominent Babbar Khalsa members saying Kulwarn had disgraced his brother's memory.

Kulwarn got his own letters from Mr. Bagri and Mr. Parmar's widow, Surinder, defending Mr. Kulwarn and saying Mr. Malik's attacks on him were untrue. Never had their been such cracks in the united front.

Friday's arrests were not really a surprise, but they were a long time coming.

Tara Singh Hayer had been waiting patiently for this day too. Before his murder, he always kept a picture of Ripudaman Singh Malik in his desk drawer.

He would say, without unnecessary detail: "I am saving it for the day when I can publish it."

AIR-INDIA ROUTE:

June 20, 1985: A man wearing a mustard-coloured turban picks up the two tickets, paying cash. The tickets are booked in the names of M. Singh, for a seat on a flight to Toronto that connected with Air-

India Flight 182, and L. Singh, who was booked on a Canadian Pacific flight to Tokyo connecting to an Air-India flight.

June 23, 1985: Canadian Pacific Flight 060 connects to Air-India Flight 182 in Toronto.

June 23, 1985: Air-India Flight 182 picks up more passangers in Montreal.

June 23, 1985: Less than an hour after the Narita bomb, Air-India Flight 182 blows up off the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 aboard.

June 23, 1985: A bomb explodes at Japan's Narita Airport among luggage from the Canadian flight from Vancouver. Two baggage handlers are killed and four others wounded.

- Both flights were intended to reach India.