Two Charged with Air India Disaster

V A N C O U V ER, Canada, Oct. 27 -- Fifteen years after a bomb planted on an Air India flight caused one of the world’s worst air disasters, Canadian investigators arrested two men they said were connected with the crime.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police on Friday arrested Sikh Ripudaman Singh Malik, a multimillionaire Vancouver businessman; and Ajaib Singh Bagri.

The men were charged with 331 counts of murder — the most ever laid in Canadian criminal history — and conspiracy to kill more than 500.

The charges stem from the bombing of Air India Flight 182 at an altitude of 31,000 southwest of Cork, Ireland, which killed 329, including 22 Americans.

The same day, an attempt to sabotage Air India Flight 301 in Tokyo backfired when a bomb blew up prematurely, killing two baggage handlers.

Malik, a member of a Sikh fundamentalist group, was arrested at a private Sikh school he runs in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey.Shortly after his arrest, agitated supporters struck news cameramen, but the episode was quickly brought under control.

Bagri is a Sikh from Kamloops, British Columbia. He was a loyal ally of Burnaby Sikh Talwinder Singh Parmar, the leader of the Babbar Khalsa, a militant group.

Canadian officials said they expected to make more arrests.

A Matter of Timing

Flight 182 went down after a Sikh boarded a bag aboard an aircraft in Vancouver that was connecting with Air India in Toronto. The Sikh did not board the flight.

ABCNEWS has learned Inderjit Singh Reyat, a Sikh militant convicted in 1991 and jailed in British Columbia for making the bomb that exploded in Tokyo, was not charged on Friday in the Air India bombing.

The reason for moving against the two suspects on Friday, according to ABCNEWS sources, is that the two men being arrested were considered likely to make efforts to avoid arrest.  

The RCMP made a decision to move early Friday when it became apparent that one man was about to board a flight for Pakistan, where Sikh terrorists have a major base.