An Indo-Canadian man, whose suitcase is believed to have exploded aboard the Air India jetliner Kanishka, in which 329 people were killed in 1985, argued about his luggage with a Canadian Airlines ground crew member hours before the tragedy.

Jeanne Bakermans told the British Columbia Supreme Court in Vancouver, that she remembers checking in the man, whose ticket identified him as M Singh, because he made such a fuss about the luggage as about 30 people waited in line at her wicket at Vancouver International Airport on the morning of June 22, 1985.

She said she told the passenger she had to put an orange tag on the suitcase, indicating it would be unloaded in Toronto and not transferred to Air India flights there and in Montreal, en route to New Delhi. "The passenger asked me if I had tagged his bag to Delhi on Air India and I said 'no, because you're not confirmed on that flight.'"

Bakermans said, "He was arguing with me [and] he started to move away from my counter and he said 'my brother knows I'm confirmed. I'll go get my brother'."

She said the passenger, aged between 25 and 35, with sparkling black eyes, a round face and western attire, left the suitcase at her counter as she told him she didn't have time to speak to his brother.

When M Singh continued arguing that he'd paid the higher business-class fare, she said she relented, placing a pink luggage tag on the man's luggage so it would be routed through to New Delhi. But the man never boarded the plane.

Vancouver businessman Ripudaman Singh Malik, 56, and Kamloops mill worker Ajaib Singh Bagri, 53, are accused of participating in a conspiracy for downing the plane.

Police believe the man's suitcase exploded aboard the Air India Flight 182, sending the Boeing 747 plunging into the Atlantic Ocean. All 329 crew and passengers died. Only 132 bodies were ever recovered.

Bakermans said she was upset when she heard the jumbo jet had gone down because she remembered checking in the passenger.

She also checked in another man, L Singh, who was transferring to an Air India flight in Tokyo, where another suitcase bomb went off the same day killing two baggage handlers at Narita airport. That bomb was targetted for another Air India flight destined for Bangkok.

Bakermans has never positively identified M Singh despite various attempts by police. Two composite drawings she helped a police artist create didn't adequately depict the passenger at her counter all those years ago.

Even her visit to an Indian jail in 1992, where she saw a lineup of eight Indo-Canadian men, didn't result in a positive identification of the mystery man.

"Security [at the airport] wasn't as high then as it has been in the last few years," she said when questioned by Bill Smart, a defence lawyer for Malik.

Abdulaziz Hassanali Premji, a former Canadian Airlines reservations agent, told the court he took a call on June 22, 1985, from a man desperate to connect to an Air India flight in Toronto.

The caller, who identified himself as Manjit Singh, told Premji he would take his chances by just going to the airport even though he had no confirmation on the Air India flights he wanted to connect with.

The Kanishka bombing: Complete Coverage