Sikh detained after being falsely accused of bomb threat

WASHINGTON: A Sikh man who was pulled off a bus and detained for 30 hours after being heard speaking in Punjabi, is demanding officials bring charges against the fellow passengers who falsely accused him of making a terror bomb threat.

Daljeet Singh, who is originally from India and was recently granted asylum in the US, was taking a Greyhound bus from Phoenix, Arizona, to Indianapolis, Indiana.

On the bus, Singh, who, as an observant member of the Sikh religion was wearing a beard and a turban, began talking with another passenger who also spoke Punjabi.

It later transpired the man, Mohammed Chotri, was an immigrant from eastern Pakistan, where Punjabi is commonly spoken.

According to a complaint filed by Singh and the Sikh Coalition, a woman on the bus reported to police that the two men were “acting weird”, speaking Arabic, and discussing a bomb.

In Amarillo, Texas, two other passengers detained Singh and Chotri in their seats until police came and arrested them at gunpoint.

Police also removed Singh’s turban and distributed mug shots of him without his turban to local media. He was detained for around 30 hours. After being interviewed by the FBI through a Punjabi language interpreter, both men were cleared of all allegations of wrongdoing, and no charges were filed.

“The only crime I committed was wearing a turban, having a beard, and speaking in a different language to another brown man on a bus,” Singh, who speaks little English, said in a statement. “I still cannot believe that this happened to me in America.”

The Sikh Coalition, an activist group, has helped Singh file a lawsuit demanding the woman who alerted police and the two men who detained him in his seat, be charged.

“Whether it’s a Sikh man on a Greyhound bus, or an Arabic speaker on a Southwest airplane, the xenophobic fear and bigotry in our country is out of control,” the group’s lawyer, Gurjot Kaur, said. – The Independent