Very Sad On Hearing This News

[LifeIsBeautiful]

This news article was from the Surrey Newspaper, Dated May 13/07. The sad part was I saw this guy all the time at the gurdwara, and he seemed like such an honest decent person. I remember him calling from time to time on various local radio stations about Sikh rights/Khalistan.

Let this be a lesson to the youth, appearances deceive..

Convicted, despite disguise Prominent Sikh found guilty of bank robbery

By Dan Ferguson

May 13 2007

The man with the gun had “blotchy skin.”

To the witness, it appeared the robber had applied makeup to lighten his skin colour.

He was also wearing a cap and a wig with longer and lighter-coloured hair than his own when he approached a teller at the TD Canada Trust Branch at 12898 96 Ave. and showed her a note.

“This is a robbery. I’m loaded and dope-sick,” the hand-scrawled message said.

The robber wanted large denomination bills and he wanted them quickly.

The man fled with $700 in cash after showing a gun and screaming at a teller for failing to move fast enough.

On Friday, Surrey Provincial Court Judge Gurmail Gill convicted Surrey resident Amrit Singh Rai on two counts of robbery in the Oct. 17, 2006 holdup.

The 44-year-old Rai, a tall, broad-shouldered man with black hair and a long, grey-tinged beard, was described in court as a once-prominent member of the Sikh community who had fallen prey to drug addiction.

Judge Gill said the only issue to be decided was identification, noting that Rai’s appearance had changed substantially since the hold-up.

While many witnesses had trouble identifying Rai as the robber, there was more than enough other evidence to prove him responsible, the judge declared.

The most “devastating” piece of evidence against Rai was the abandoned hold-up note which had his fingerprints on it, Gill said, because an innocent explanation was unlikely.

There was also police evidence showing the robber and Rai had identical builds and facial features, including the shape of their eyes, mouth and nose.

And Rai’s own brother had, reluctantly, testified that the cap the robber was wearing belonged to his son, and that he’d seen Rai wearing camouflage pants identical to those worn by the robber.

At the urging of Crown prosecutor Winston Sayson, a psychiatric assessment has been ordered before Rai is to be sentenced on July 24.

Sayson said the Crown intends to seek “federal time” for Rai, meaning a jail term of at least two years.

For a time, Rai was known for his involvement in the fundamentalist Khalistan movement that urges creation of a separate Sikh state in India.

dferguson@surreyleader.com

[Punjabi_Link]

That's sucks!

Yesterday, some sikh kid was stabbed to death here in Toronto.

http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_10942.aspx

What is happening to our community? :devil:

[Carpe Diem]

Let this be a lesson to the youth, appearances deceive..

Well it could also be a lesson to us ALL ... that people make mistakes and no one is perfect...