Daljeet Singh was pulled off a bus on April 27 and detained for 30 hours in America, all for speaking in Punjabi on board a bus. He has now demanded action against the fellow passenger who made a false accusation against him of making a terror threat.
The incident happened when Daljeet Singh, who is originally from India and was recently granted asylum in the US, was traveling on a bus from Phoenix, Arizona, to Indianapolis, Indiana.
On the bus, Mr. Singh began talking in Punjabi language with another passenger, Mohammed Chotri who was an immigrant from eastern Pakistan, where Punjabi is commonly spoken.
Daljeet Singh was detained for 30 hours after a woman on the bus reported that he was discussing terror bomb threat with his fellow passenger.
According to Mr. Singh's complaint, a woman on the bus reported to police that the two men were “acting weird,” speaking Arabic, and discussing a bomb.
Mr. Singh and Mr. Chotri were detained in the bus until police came and arrested them at gunpoint.
Mr. Singh says the Police removed his 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 Federal Bureau of Investigation 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,” Mr. Singh.
“I still cannot believe that this happened to me in America.”
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.
The Sikh Coalition has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Mr. Singh to bring charges against the woman passenger who leveled false accusations against Mr. Singh.
“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,” said Gurjot Kaur, a senior lawyer at the Sikh Coalition.
“Nobody deserves to be treated this way in our country. We trust that local law enforcement will treat our complaint with the same vigilance and vigor as the initial complaint received,” said Ms. Kaur.
