A trial is beginning in the Canadian city of Vancouver that could bring to an end years of uncertainty, grief and growing anger at the competence of the country's criminal investigators.

Malik and Bagri: Opted for trial by judge, not jury

Air India flight 182 disappeared from radar screens in late June of 1985.

All 329 people on board - mostly Canadians of Indian origin - died.

The attack has been blamed on Sikh separatist militants fighting from a base in Canada for an independent homeland in Indian Punjab.

But it has taken nearly 18 years for the Canadian authorities to bring two main suspects to trial, and that has caused anguish for victim's families and doubts about the investigation itself.

'Prepared for worst'

In a small bungalow in Toronto's western suburbs three men and a woman are talking about tea, but they are thinking about grief, frustration and justice delayed.

We are hopeful that something will come, but I wouldn't really put my money on it, Bal Gupta, who lost his wife

Kavita and Kumar Berry lost a 15-year-old son in the Air India explosion.

Harran Radhakrishna lost his wife and both his children, while Gupta's wife was killed.

For 18 years these people have coped with grief and growing anger at a justice system that seemed determined to ignore their grievances.

Bal Gupta says even though the trial is starting he is prepared for the worst.

The whole community was waiting very anxiously and finally the trial will be under way and our community is happy about that Jarnail S Bhandal, Canadian Sikh

"We are hopeful that something will come, but I wouldn't really put my money on it," he says.

"I'm talking to family and - whatever we see - we don't know all the facts, but we hope that somebody who did this is found guilty, otherwise it will be a real travesty of justice."

'Horrendous' experience

An artist's drawing of the two accused sitting in the witness box behind glass

Hopes for a verdict that bring closure may be dim among these people, but all of them will be at the trial.

They are flown to distant Vancouver by the Canadian Government in what they say is a long overdue recognition of the Air India victims' losses.

"It must have been horrendous for the families, especially because a lot of the families never had bodies to have a funeral," says Journalist Robert Matas, who has been covering the case for Canada's national newspaper, The Globe and Mail.

"Only 131 of 239 bodies were ever recovered and for a lot of those families they never really had a chance to finish mourning."

Bullet-proof enclosures

About 5,000 kilometres west of the Gupta home in Toronto, Vancouver's glass steel supreme court angles back from busy streets.

Prosecutors allege that the accused avenged the Indian army's storming of Sikh's Golden Temple at Amritsar in 1984

A series of terraced gardens, on top of windowed court rooms and offices.

The trial of the two main accused in the Air India case takes place here in a special court room that cost the Canadian tax payer about $5 million.

Spectators sit behind high security screens of bullet-proof plastic and watch proceedings on closed circuit televisions.

"We have to keep in mind that the court needs to remain open for public access, for the public attending court and at the same time to keep security as transparent as possible," says Sheriff Ross McKenna, who is in charge of security.

"Not on a level at which to intimidate people and cause unnecessary fear. But to make sure that due diligence is exercised," he adds.

'Opportunity for closure'

Canada's Sikh community was outraged by the Air India bombing too, as everyone else in the country was.

But the fact remains that the attack was linked to the long defeated Sikh separatist uprising in Indian Punjab.

The past years have been tough for Sikhs in Canada and they welcome the trial as a opportunity for closure, says Jarnail S Bhandal of the Khala Diwan Society.

"The whole community was waiting very anxiously and finally the trial will be under way and our community is happy about that," he says.

"That's why we want to leave it behind. It is stereotyping the whole Sikh community as terrorists, so we want it to be behind us and we are not that kind of people."

So, for Canada's Sikh community, the families of the victims and Canadians and people in India at large this trial represents many things - an opportunity for closure and of course an end to a tragic chapter in history.

But this complicated case has thrown up many surprises in the past.

Nothing can be ruled in or out until the verdict is finally delivered, possibly up to a year or more from now.