METRO VANCOUVER - A colourful admitted drug dealer who was a key Air India defence witness for Ripudaman Singh Malik will appear in Surrey Provincial Court Monday morning to face a first-degree murder charge.

Raminder Singh (Mindy) Bhandher, whose father Balwant remains a suspect in the 1985 terrorist bombing, allegedly entered the Surrey condo of a female friend on Jan. 28 and gunned down Tejvir Singh (Sunny) Bains, her young lover.

The woman, Ripy Kaur Jubbal, was the ex-girlfriend of one of Bhandher's closest criminal associates - Nachatar Singh Bagri - who was charged with uttering threats against Jubbal after the couple broke up last year.

The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team arrested Bhandher on Friday with the help of Vancouver police as he drove with an associate through the city, sending shocked relatives scrambling to hire a lawyer and attempt to arrange bail.

Bhandher's mother Gurdeep hung up on a Sun reporter who called to ask about her son Sunday.

A family friend, Harjit Singh Atwal, whose son Bobby Harminder was another criminal associate recently convicted in a kidnapping case, also slammed down the phone.

The brazen shooting of Bains, who was just 24, is believed to have been personal. A friend of Bhandher's allegedly picked him up afterwards outside Jubbal's Surrey condo complex at 12585-72nd Ave.

IHIT Cpl. Dale Carr would only say that the two were known to each other and both were known to police.

Bhandher got married about 18 months ago and has a baby. He had been living in a two-bedroom condo at 121 Stree and 75A Avenue - just blocks from where the murder took place on a snowy evening last month. He just listed his unit for sale.

Bhandher called The Sun in December 2006 to warn against publishing his name in the newspaper again after a story about him being named in a massive ICBC civil suit involving an organized crime group that was running a stolen luxury car ring between Alberta, B.C. and the U.S.

The admitted gangster had split his time in recent years between Metro Vancouver, Calgary, where he spent his early childhood, and Toronto.

The Vancouver Sun has learned that the lead prosecutor assigned to Bhandher's murder file will be Joe Bellows, the Crown counsel who also led the evidence against Malik during the Air India bombing trial.

It was Bellows who cross-examined Bhandher in May 2004, when the young man admitted to a long criminal history, including drug trafficking, gun possession, fraudulent credit card duplication and lying under oath.

He testified to carrying a loaded handgun, to firing it for fun, and to threatening to kill people on at least two occasions.

Bhandher also admitted to throwing rocks through the living room window of Surrey resident Narinder Singh Gill, who became a Crown witness in the Air India case.

The graduate of Surrey's Khalsa School also said he had dealt and smuggled marijuana, cocaine and ecstasy for eight years, making about $360,000 from his illegal activities. As a teen, Bhandher and other Khalsa School kids got involved in a gang they dubbed Gianis (priests) Gone Bad, or the GGBs.

Bhandher testified that he considered Malik a "generous father figure" and lived with the Maliks during his teenage years when he was having trouble at home. Malik had given his mother a Land Rover. And the young man  even accompanied Malik's wife Raminder to India.

He had been called by Malik to refute the testimony of the Crown's star witness who claimed she overheard Bhandher and Malik in April 1997 discussing some incriminating information about the bombing.

Bhandher told the Air India trial judge that the woman must be lying because he was in India at the time for a sham wedding for which he was to be paid $10,000.

Bhandher, along with his father Balwant, and gang associate Jethinder Singh (Roman) Narwal, were on hand for the Air India verdict acquitting Malik and co-accused Ajaib Singh Bagri on March 16, 2005.

Balwant Bhandher remains a close associate of Malik's who has never been charged in the Air India bombing despite admitting he is a suspect. Both Malik and Balwant Bhandher were long-time trustees of the Khalsa School and the elder Bhandher remains a director of the charitable Satnam Trust along with Malik's eldest son.

 Balwant Bhandher was away in China for work when his son was arrested, according to someone answering at Harji's Fireplace - the Surrey business where Mindy Bhandher claimed he sometimes worked.

Mindy Bhandher pleaded guilty in the U.S. in 1999 of trying to smuggle money into the U.S. In Canada, he was arrested as a murder suspect in 1998, but was never charged and ended up being a Crown witness instead against another of his old Khalsa School buddies who was convicted of killing his stepmother.

Before his own arrest on murder charges, Bhandher would regularly turn up at trials involving his friends or relatives. At the breaks, he would chat with lawyers, the accused and sometimes even reporters.

Just last month, he arrived at the Vancouver Law Courts with several associates to offer support to four friends who pleaded guilty to a violent kidnapping in which the victim's father was asked for $500,000 ransom.

He also attended the kidnapping trial of his former room-mate Roman Narwal, who is now serving a 17-year-sentence. Narwal's father Avtar was also an Air India bombing suspect until he committed suicide in 1998.

Both Roman Narwal and Bhandher are believed to have knowledge of several unsolved murders, including that of newspaper publisher Tara Singh Hayer in November 1998.