Christian Morales charged with a hate crime.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Police in New York City have arrested a 20 year-old man under suspicion that he perpetrated last year’s brutal attack on Prabhjot Singh, a Sikh professor at Columbia University.
Christian Morales, a resident of the city’s Harlem neighborhood, was arrested late Friday night, and was brought to courton Saturday morning. He has been formally charged with aggravated harassment and committing a hate crime, and is currently out on $5,000 bail. Although some 20 people were suspected of having been involved with the brutal beating of Singh last September, Morales is currently the only person who has been arrested in connection to the Singh beating.
Singh, an assistant professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia, was walking along 110th Street in Manhattan around 8:15pm on the night of September 21 when he was accosted by multiple assailants, and savagely beaten. The suspects also allegedly shouted anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim phrases while beating Singh, who was with a friend at the time, such as “terrorist” and “Osama.” The beating only stopped when three passers-by came and broke it up.
A devout Sikh, Singh wears a turban and keeps a long, unshorn beard. He is the Director of Systems Design at the Earth Institute, and the co-chair of the One Million Community Health Worker Campaign. He holds an MD from Cornell and a Ph.D. from Rockefeller University, as well as a post-doctoral fellowship from Columbia. He has a wife and one year-old son, both of whom he had dropped off at home before going on that walk in September, when the assault occurred.
Singh suffered a fracture to his lower jaw, a puncture in his elbow, as well as bruising and swelling around his face and head due to being repeatedly hit in that region on hard pavement. He was hospitalized for several days following the attack.
At a press conference on Monday, Singh said that he welcomed the chance to teach his attackers more about Sikhism, which, he said, is a religion of peace and love. He hopes that by spreading awareness of Sikhism, it will curb anti-Sikh attacks and also help differentiate the religion from Islam; many attacks against Sikhs have happened because their beards and turbans get them mistaken for terrorists.
Morales is next set to appear in court on Thursday, April 24.