Should the govt get involved in Harjinder Singh case? He’s no victim

File photo of Harjinder Singh | change.org

Let’s start with a little imagining. A Bangladeshi enters India illegally. He ends up in Delhi, and though he speaks very little Hindi and does not know how to interpret road signs, he finds a job as a driver of an 18-wheeler truck.

Either because he is reckless or because he could not understand road signage, he makes an illegal U-turn on a busy highway, and his long truck blocks all the lanes on the other side of the road. This confuses motorists who expect the highway to be clear and suddenly find a huge obstruction on the road.

It’s too late for one vehicle to stop, so it crashes into the truck. Three people inside the vehicle are killed.

The truck driver tries to escape but is apprehended, and it is discovered that he is here illegally and fails every test the police give him, from language to driving. He has no right to be in the country and no business driving a truck.

How would we react?

It’s an easy question to answer.

We would be angry, outraged and would demand that the driver face the full might of the law.

Now let’s stop imagining and hurtle into reality. Change locations from India to the US. Change the nationality of the driver from Bangladeshi to Indian, and the local language he does not speak from Hindi to English.

We then have the case of Harjinder Singh, a 28-year-old Indian who entered the US illegally, who drove a truck that killed three people and who, when arrested, failed tests for understanding English and understanding road signs.

Are you surprised that people in the US are so livid? That they want to know how he crossed over into America illegally? How did he get a license to do a job he was so clearly unqualified to do?

I’m not surprised. And nor, I suspect, are you.

But here’s what surprises me.

There are moves within the Indian origin community in North America to support Singh, using what may be described as the ‘bechaara ladka’ or ‘poor boy’ argument. These moves have found an echo in Punjab, where political leaders have asked the Indian government to intervene to help Singh. Once again, it’s the ‘bechaara ladka’ syndrome.

Even while these campaigns on behalf of Singh have been waged, two other agendas have surfaced.

Two agendas

In the US, the case of an illegal immigrant who caused three deaths was bound to have a resonance given the current anti-immigration mood. And the more support Singh has received from Indian-origin people in the US, the greater has been the uproar against immigrants and their supporters. (There is also a domestic political battle playing out here: California, which allowed Harjinder to drive, is governed by Gavin Newsom, a Democratic Party opponent of President Trump.)

In India, there is a second agenda. We know for sure that Singh was in the US illegally, but it is also believed that he managed to stay on because he claimed he would suffer if he went back to India. It has been suggested that, by this, he meant that Sikhs were being mistreated in India. It is also claimed that he attended rallies and gatherings organised by pro-Khalistani elements.

This has led many Indians to treat him as a man who stayed on in America by badmouthing India and supporting some bogus India-discriminates-against-Sikhs-agenda. Now, when he is in trouble, it is the ‘evil Indians’ he has turned to for help.

If you go along with this interpretation (which, to be fair, has yet to be fully established beyond doubt), then the demand from Punjab politicians for our Ministry of External Affairs to intervene on Harjinder’s behalf also makes sense. The politicians know what they are asking for is unreasonable, and don’t care whether it happens. But they want to establish their credentials as supporters of Sikhs all over the world.

I don’t want to spend too much time on the he-is-a-Khalistani line of reasoning because if it is valid, then the case for Harjinder is nonexistent. If he has stayed on by playing the Sikhs-are-suffering card, then he should expect nothing from India. We should never squander our sympathy or our resources on such a person. He may be better off asking Gurpatwant Singh Pannun for help.

Which Indians to help?

But there is a larger question here. How involved should the Indian government get when Indians abroad are charged with criminal offences?

Well, first of all, let’s make a fundamental distinction. Indians who live in India and pay taxes here have a right to expect some attention if they are accused of crimes while travelling abroad. How far that attention goes depends on the circumstances of each case.

But Indians who live permanently in foreign countries do not have the same right to appeal to the Government of India when they are accused of crimes in those countries. If you choose to live in another country, you should respect that country’s laws and its justice system. You shouldn’t come weeping to India.

That’s a simple and basic distinction, but of course, there are grey areas. If the country in question does not have a fair judicial system or if an Indian national is being persecuted on political or religious grounds, then, yes, the Indian government may have to take an interest in the matter.

And the case of Indians who go to the Middle East to work for short stints is complicated. They are not long-term residents of those countries and have entered legally on work visas. If they face injustice, then yes, the Indian government should get involved.

But when it comes to immigrants to the West, there is very rarely any reason for India to take an official interest. And when it comes to illegal immigrants, we should wash our hands of them. They knew what they were doing when they broke the laws of their host countries and smuggled themselves across borders.

Singh falls in that last category. Even if he did not claim he would suffer in India, he is an illegal immigrant involved in a fatal accident caused by his own actions.

He is no victim. He is a grown man who exploited the weaknesses of the American immigration system to his benefit. This led to tragic consequences, including the deaths of three innocent people.

We should let the US courts decide how to handle his case. It really has nothing to do with us.

Vir Sanghvi is a print and television journalist, and talk show host. He tweets @virsanghvi. Views are personal.

(Edited by Theres Sudeep)