(Courtesy: San Jose Mercury News) FREMONT: Bay Area Sikhs are blaming factional infiltrators for a shooting at their Fremont temple Oct.9 in which one man was wounded and another escaped injury when his kirpan deflected a bullet.
Worshippers said their prayers were interrupted shortly after 2 p.m. by a series of shots outside the temple. They ran out to find two gunmen standing over Balwinder B. Singh, 47, of Mountain View, a member of their congregation, who had been hit in the stomach.
When confronted, the assailants tried to escape by running through the temple. One was apprehended by Fremont police. The other was spotted later in a crowd of onlookers after apparently wounding his hand with a knife in the temple kitchen in hopes of masquerading as a victim.
The shooting was followed by another struggle in which a second worshiper suffered a stab wound in the head, Police arrested another man in connection with that incident.
Fremont police identified Ajit Singh, 29, of San Jose, as the man suspected of stabbing Balwinder Singh. Police said Gurdashan Singh, 25, of Union City was arrested at the scene, but later released. A third man, Gurtej Singh Dhaliwal, 34, of Bakersfield, was the subject of a citizen’s arrest for battery on Kuldip S. Goraya, 35, of Milpitas.
Goraya was treated for a cut over his left eye and released. Balwinder Singh, was reported in fair condition at Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley.
In a bizarre twist, one temple member who pursued the gunmen discovered he had been saved by his kirpan, a ceremonial dagger whom by Sikhs. Gurmeet Singh, 43, thought the attacker had missed when he fired at him during the chase. Butan hour and a half later, he found a bullet lodged in his knife sheath.
“By the grace of God, I was lucky,” said Singh, who nuns an auto repair shop in Hayward.
He said the gunmen were recent arrivals at the temple.
Several worshipers said they suspected the gunmen of being affiliated with the government of India.
Ram Singh, also a member of the Fremont temple, said he suspected the shooting had been planned in advance, saying it fit the pattem of similar incidents at Sikh temples in New York, Los Angeles and Yuba City.
“There is a group of people going around the country creating trouble,” he said. “I am very disappointed that this happened: ‘There is no reason for it.”
Article extracted from this publication >> October 14, 1994
