He started annual blood drives and made speeches in defence of human rights in India.

But on Tuesday, the former Sikh leader will be in Surrey Provincial Court to be sentenced for robbing a bank last fall, desperate for cash to feed a crack habit that sent his life spiralling downward.

In a series of jail interviews, Rai, now 44 and clean for months, said he is contrite about his actions and ready to face whatever punishment is meted out.

"I am so ashamed and so embarrassed," Rai said on the weekend. "I have hurt my family and friends and other members of the community. I ask for forgiveness. It could have been my daughter working in the bank."

Prosecutor Winston Sayson has said he will ask for federal time for Rai, meaning more than two years, after his convictions related to the holdup last Oct. 17.

Rai, the former national spokesman for the now-banned International Sikh Youth Federation, walked into the TD Canada Trust Branch at 12898 96 Ave. in Surrey and showed the teller a note.

"This is a robbery. I'm loaded and dope-sick," the scrawled message said.

As a baptized Sikh, Rai says, he never touched booze or drugs for 21 years. But all that changed in 2003, when some members of his former group began to call him a traitor, resulting in a deep depression that started his cocaine use.

He lost his family, his job and his house, ending up on the streets of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside doing whatever it took to pay for more crack.

When he robbed the bank last fall, he was gaunt and unhealthy, his 6-foot-4 frame 80 pounds lighter than before he started using.

Jail, he said, has been the best thing for him, prompting him to get off drugs and regain hope for his future.

He thinks his community is in denial over a drug problem that has ravaged many families and led to drug gangs and murders. He hopes to work to combat the problem when he gets out of jail.

"I want to help people who have drug problems. That is my goal. That is exactly what I want to do."

Rai was drawn into the campaign for a separate Sikh nation called Khalistan after the Indian Army raided the Golden Temple in June 1984.

Devastated at the destruction of Sikhism's holiest shrine, Rai heard a powerful speech at a Calgary Sikh temple by Babbar Khalsa leader Talwinder Singh Parmar, who would become the suspected mastermind of the June 1985 Air India bombing.

Rai was so moved that Parmar baptized the 21-year-old and Rai joined the Babbar Khalsa, committing himself to travel to India to fight for Khalistan.

But within a few weeks, he met General Jaswant Bhullar, the leader of the World Sikh Organization, and joined that group. He ended up joining the ISYF because he believed the group would get Khalistan faster.

ISYF leaders in B.C. arranged a clandestine training camp in New Westminster that began in the spring of 1985, Rai said. He travelled from Calgary with his high school buddy, Balbir Singh Khaira, who had also joined the group.

For months, they did conditioning and paramilitary training that they planned to use in India.

"We jumped out of vehicles going 40 kilometres an hour," he recalled. "I was also tortured, just to make sure I could take it."

While others in the group, including Khaira, went on to India, Rai was sent back to Calgary as he had a young daughter and another baby on the way.

His friend and several others from Toronto who were in the training ended up getting killed in Punjab.

"I still miss my friend," Rai said. "It really was a waste."

He became disillusioned with the armed struggle and tried to change the ISYF into a strictly "democratic" human rights group.

As a leader of the new South Asian Human Rights Group, Rai arranged meetings with representatives of the Indian government in New York four years ago.

That led some to call him a traitor, which resulted in in falling into a deep depression, drug addiction and now jail.

"I just went out of control. I was under so much stress."