New Delhi: A Sikh restaurant owner in London claims he has shut down his eatery after it was allegedly attacked by Khalistan supporters Wednesday evening.
This comes after supporters of radical activist and Khalistan sympathiser Amritpal Singh — for whom a manhunt is currently on in Punjab — held a protest at the Indian High Commission in London last Sunday.
The incident, during which demonstrators pulled down the Indian flag at the premises of the Indian High Commission, has sparked a diplomatic row between India and the UK, prompting Delhi Police to register a case Friday in connection with the protest.
Speaking to ThePrint, 52-year-old Harman Singh Kapoor, owner of the restaurant, said that at 6.30 pm, a group of men with “concealed weapons” came to his restaurant, banged on the glass doors and shouted slurs in Punjabi. Kapoor’s Indian restaurant in London’s Hammersmith area, Rangrez, is a decade old.
“As you can see from the video, they were banging on the windows. I had managed to lock the doors in time. We had two customers inside. Everyone was terrified,” he told ThePrint.
A video of the attack was posted on video hosting platform TikTok and has now gone viral on social media. In it, a group of men can be seen dressed in black, banging on the doors of the restaurant. Singh is heard telling his wife to call the police.
A hotel named Rangrez owned by @khushikapoor211 in UK was attacked on 23 March by Khalistani goons!
5/n pic.twitter.com/2pA1UtCMNO
— The Pamphlet (@Pamphlet_in) March 23, 2023
“We called the police. We requested them to look at this matter urgently but no officers came to the restaurant,” said Kapoor. “After some time, the goons left.”
He added that he suspects the leaders of the recent protest are instigating attacks against Sikhs who don’t support the Khalistan movement.
‘Pols aagi’ video
The attack came after Kapoor, who has over 30,000 followers on his TikTok account, posted videos criticising the Khalistan movement.
In a TikTok video posted Monday, Kapoor said: “Do you think I don’t want Khalistan? I want it. But not the way you guys are going about it. Khalistan means pure. You guys are ruining its name.”
A day later, Singh posted a video mocking one of Amritpal Singh’s aides who went on a Facebook Live a few days prior while fleeing from the police. The aide, while running through farming land, could be heard saying that he was being chased by hundreds of Punjab’s police officers. “Pols aagi pols (police have come)”, the aide could be heard saying in the video.
In his video, Kapoor repeats the “Pols aagi” line while steering the wheel of his car and laughing.
Khalistan sympathisers in the UK, however, feel the attack on Kapoor’s restaurant is justified.
“Somebody who is mocking Sikh suffering is obviously going to provoke people. The reaction is completely understandable,” said Shamsher Singh, co-founder of the National Sikh Youth Federation (NSYF) and programme director of UK-based ‘Khalistan Centre’, whose Twitter account has been suspended in India.
Singh’s Khalistan Centre describes itself as an organisation that works towards “supporting and cultivating Gurmat-driven leadership to further the struggle for Khalistan”.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
Also read: Amritpal trained men to use weapons at makeshift firing range in his village: Punjab Police