Courtesy: The Modesto Bee A meeting of a few hundred people at the Guru Nanak Gurdwara in Livingston led to a pushing and shoving match, resulting in the arrest of three men.
Booked into Merced County Jail were Tarsem Singh Shoker, 27, of Livingston; Inderjit Singh Birring, 42, of Manteca; and Jaswinder Singh Lasher, 20 of Los Banos.
Sgt. Gary Keever of the Livingston Police Department said his office received a call at approximately 12:30 p.m, that a fight had broken out at the gurdwara at 884 B St.
Keever said 50 or 60 people were pushing and shoving one another in front when two police unitsarrivedon the scene.
Four additional units were called it from the California Highway Patrol and five from the Merced County Sheriff’s Department.
Merced County Sheriff Tom Sawyer, who was on patrol at the time, ‘said between 200 and 300 people were at the scene, including the four or five dozen involved in the shoving match outside.
“After we arrived, it quieted down right away,” Keever said, Members involved in the melee had placed Shoker, Birring and Lasher under citizen’s arrest. The men were taken to Merced County Jail and later released on bail.
Keever said it was the second time in ‘a month police had responded to a disturbance at the Gurdwara.
Satnam Hayer, son-in-law of former gurdwara President Ajit Singh Samra, said a struggle for leadership has developed between two groups and that the violence began during a meeting to elect seven new members to the Gurudwara’s ruling council.
Hayer said his wife, Davinder, was thrown to the floor when she tried to videotape the proceedings.
Similar disturbances over gurdwara leadership have occurred in about a half dozen Sikh communities, including Yuba City, Fremont, New York and Fairfax, VA.
Article extracted from this publication >> May 12, 1995
