Three Men Charged After Brawl At Sikh Temple
Posted April 19, 2010 1:29 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Peel police have charged three men after a fight broke out at a crowded Sikh temple Sunday afternoon.
Officers say shortly before 3:30pm a group of people disrupted a meeting of about 50 or 60 at the Sri Guru Nanak Sikh Temple in Brampton and the two sides exchanged blows.
“I don’t know who raised their hand first. I heard loud yelling and I saw machetes and small axes and the crying,” said Jagdish Grewal, owner of the Punjabi Post.
“One guy hit the other guy very badly with a hammer … There was blood. Yes, of course there was blood.”
That man was beaten unconscious and was one of four Brampton men treated in hospital and released.
Police, who had been warned about the temple’s ongoing internal power struggle, were on hand at the time and arrested three of the injured men.
Harvinder Pal Dhaliwal, 41, was charged with assault and released. Tehal Shergill, 60, and Satwant Deol, 25, were charged with assault and weapons offences and were being held pending a bail hearing Monday.
Outside of the meeting, there were hundreds of people in the temple engaged in other activities whom police say cooperated with the investigation. Officers reportedly plan to charge a fourth man with assault.
Earlier this month, a 52-year-old man allegedly used a kirpan, or ceremonial dagger, to stab the president of Brampton’s Sikh Lehar Temple, 53-year-old Manjit Mangat. Sukhwant Singh was charged with attempted murder and assault in that case.
There’s a meeting on April 21st at the Sikh Spiritual Centre in Rexdale and some in the community are worried it too could get heated.
Anyone with information on Sunday’s incident is asked to call police at (905) 453-2121, ext. 2133, or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).
