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Mixed-Faith Wedding Sparked Angry Protest At Sikh Temple, Court hears

IANS, 02 Feb, 2018 04:12 PM
    An official at a Sikh temple was assaulted by having his tie grabbed during a mass protest against a mixed-faith wedding ceremony, a court has heard.
     
     
    A trial at Birmingham Crown Court was told demonstrators shouted vile insults in Punjabi after forcing open the doors of the gurdwara in Leamington in September 2016.
     
     
    Gursharan Singh, 34, and Kulvinder Bir Singh, 38, both deny religiously aggravated offences.
     
     
    Trial rosecutor Sophie Murray said: “The Crown case is that these two men attended the gurdwara temple as part of a group with the sole intention of disrupting an inter-faith marriage with which they disagreed.”
     
     
    Prosecutors allege Gursharan Singh, of no fixed address, assaulted temple committee member Bhopinder Singh Aujla. A charge he denies.
     
    Giving evidence from behind a screen, Aujla described how another official received a call from a security guard warning him men were "rushing" the gates ahead of a wedding service on 11 September 2016.
     
     
     
     
    He told the court: "Once I'd locked the door, I went towards the dining room just to alert my colleagues that there were people outside banging the doors.
     
     
    "I just started moving out of the way, feeling frightened, and the next thing you know one of them tried to grab me between the legs.
     
     
    "Another one of his colleagues grabbed me quite tightly by my tie and I pushed his hand away."
     
     
    Kulvinder Bir Singh, 38, of Tilehurst Drive, Coventry, denies damaging signs relating to the ceremony at the temple.
     
     
    Leamington gurdwara is one of a small number of Sikh temples in Britain which stages inter-faith weddings and had experienced problems with protesters in the past.
     
     
    The trial continues.

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