Sikh Files Lawsuit In Alleged Hate Crime
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
When Rajinder Singh Khalsa sees people on the street looking at his turban, a required article of his Sikh faith, he feels a wave of fear.
A year ago Mr. Khalsa, 55, was beaten outside a restaurant in Richmond Hill, Queens. He filed a lawsuit Monday against his alleged attackers.
It is the first time a Sikh victim of a hate crime has filed such a suit, despite the more than 400 documented hate crimes against Sikhs in America since the attacks of September 11, 2001.
“The Sikh community has suffered dozens of hate crimes in this city, and hundreds around the country,” the legal director of the Manhattan-based organization the Sikh Coalition, Amardeep Singh, said. On July 11, 2004, five men approached Mr. Khalsa and told him to give them his “dirty curtain.” When he started to explain the religious significance of the turban, the men beat him until he lost consciousness.
Witnesses later told Mr. Khalsa that when he was unconscious, the men continued to jump on his body and kick him, he said at a news conference yesterday.
Mr. Khalsa suffered a broken nose and eye socket and partial loss of vision in one eye. He had to miss months of work – he works for a car service – and he said the attack also left him with persistent pain and fear.
“I could not lie down for a month because blood would come out of my nose,” Mr. Khalsa said. “Whenever I tried to sleep, I could not. I could not breathe freely. … My eyesight changed. …When anybody sees my turban now, I am scared. I think, maybe they are going to beat me.”
When Mr. Khalsa decided to sue, the Sikh Coalition approached the Legal Access Network for South Asians, a group formed by about 150 lawyers after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
The suit names six defendants: the five men arrested in the attack, and a Richmond Hill restaurant that the suit claims continued to serve the men alcohol after they had become intoxicated.
The criminal trial, on charges including assault as a hate crime, is scheduled for October. No criminal charges were lodged against the restaurant.
