Indian Sikh musician shot dead outside US gurdwara
Washington: A Sikh man from India’s Uttar Pradesh state was shot dead outside a gurudwara in the US state of Alabama by unknown assailants.
According to Kashmir Media Service, Raj Singh alias Goldy, was a musician and resident of Tanda Sahuwala village in Uttar Pradesh’s Bijnor district. He had been residing in the US for more than a year with a group of musicians.
On the day of the incident, he had visited the gurudwara at Selma in Alabama to perform kirtan (devotional singing in Sikhism).
After performing the kirtan with his musical group, Goldy was standing outside the gurdwara when unidentified assailants shot him dead. Reportedly, the incident took place on February 23.
“We were informed about the incident by relatives. It has been five days, and his postmortem is yet to be done. We have reached out to the gurdwara committee for more information, and they are helping us. We have also appealed to our government for justice and the arrest of the killers,” Gurdeep Singh, the deceased’s brother-in-law, said in a media interview.
Goldy’s family believes that his killing could be a case of hate crime, even though the precise motive behind Singh’s murder is yet to be ascertained.
This is the second murder of an Indian-origin person in the US state in the month of February. Earlier last month, Pravin Raojibhai Patel, 76, an American hotelier of Indian origin was shot dead after a confrontation with a man asking for a room in his motel in Sheffield, Alabama.
Goldy, the eldest child of his parents, was the only breadwinner of his family after his father died five years ago. He has left behind his mother, two sisters and a younger brother. His family has written to Indian PM Modi requesting his body be brought back to India for cremation.
