MAN PUTS GUN TO SIKH CABBIE’S HEAD IN US
A sheriff’s office in Illinois, US, is investigating a case of assault on a Sikh man working as an Uber driver that is purportedly a hate crime, reports said on Thursday, after allegations that neither has the attackers been arrested nor the legal provisions against hate crime been imposed. “Which country do you belong to?... I hate turban people,” a male passenger said and held a gun to the head of Gurjeet Singh.
A sheriff’s office in Illinois, US, is investigating a case of assault on a Sikh man working as an Uber driver that is purportedly a hate crime, reports said on Thursday, after allegations that neither has the attackers been arrested nor the legal provisions against hate crime been imposed.
“Which country do you belong to?... I hate turban people,” a male passenger said and held a gun to the head of Gurjeet Singh, who is also a head granthi (religious community leader) and lives in Northwest Illinois, in the January 28, according to community organisation Sikh Coalition.
Sikh men in America, repeatedly mistaken for Muslims because of their turban-andbeard appearance in a growing atmosphere of Islamophobia, have been victims of numerous hate crimes, including a man mistaken for “an Arab” and murdered immediately after the 9/11 bombings, and six members of a gurdwara in Wisconsin killed in a mass shooting, according to details given in a report in The Washington Post.
Leaders of Sikh Coalition expressed frustration on Wednesday after meeting with Rock Island county sheriff Gerry Bustos, over the fact that the passenger has not been arrested since the attack, which the driver reported to police on January 29, the day after it occurred. The sheriff told the Post that he expects to charge the suspect with aggravated assault and “perhaps further charges” by the week’s end, after he receives information that the sheriff’s office has requested from Uber through a search warrant.
Investigators have interviewed the driver, the suspect and another passenger who was in the car, Bustos was quoted as saying. He reportedly said that the driver picked up the two passengers together around 11 pm, soon after which the male passenger and the driver got into an argument. He said he couldn’t disclose the details of the argument while the investigation is underway. “The argument was about where people’s loyalties lie. There was an argument over where people were from,” he was quoted as saying.
‘US OR YOU?’
The Sikh Coalition said that the male passenger started asking Singh, the driver, a series of questions: “What is your status here? Which country do you belong to? Do you serve your country or do you serve our country?”
The organisation said Singh, a legal US resident who does not speak fluent English, said he serves the US and India, because his parents live there.