17-year-old attacker has not been named.
By Raif Karerat
The teen accused of assaulting a Sikh man in Darien, Illinois, Inderjit Singh Mukker, has been charged with a hate crime in addition to the previous charges of felony and aggravated battery.
The state’s attorney filed an amended juvenile petition to include one count of hate crime, a Class 4 felony, to the juvenile petition, DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert B. Berlin said in a statement.
The release said the decision was made after further investigation and the discovery of additional evidence, and came just hours before a Sikh organization planned a rally and news conference demanding the hate crime charge, according to the Chicago Tribune.
On Friday, the state’s attorney’s office announced that five felony counts of aggravated battery had been filed against the teenager, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Speaking of the incident, Harsimran Kaur — Legal Director for the Sikh Coalition and spokesperson for the Mukker family — informed NBC News that 59-year-old Mukker, a U.S. citizen, was looking to turn when the driver of the car next to him started yelling obscenities and racial slurs. The epithets and insults included: “Bin Laden,” “Terrorist,” “Go back to your country,” and “Why are you driving that small Prius, I’ve got a big SUV.”
After the light turned green, the other driver continued to drive aggressively. When Mukker pulled over to let the other car pass, the other driver instead stopped in front of him, exited his vehicle, and began repeatedly punching Mukker in the face through the open car window until Mukker lost consciousness for 10 or 15 minutes.
Speaking at the rally in Darien, the seemingly indefatigable Mukker stated, “This is my country. This is my home. I am an American.”
Mukker said he is a taxi driver who has lived in Darien for 27 years with his wife, who is a nurse, his daughter, who is studying to be a nurse, and his son, who is a college student.
“I’m a proud husband and father and I want my family to be free in who they are and what they believe,” Mukker continued. Most importantly, he insisted, he wants his family to be safe.
The Sikh Coalition commended Berlin’s decision and said the coalition’s legal team had a two-hour meeting Monday afternoon with members of the state’s attorney’s office and provided “additional evidence and information that showed hatred to be the primary motivation behind the crime.”
“For the Sikh American community, a formal hate crime charge was never about a harsher penalty, but instead prosecuting the crime for what it was,” the Sikh Coalition’s legal director, Harsimran Kaur, wrote in an email. “We can’t combat the problem of hatred against minority communities in America unless our elected officials and government agencies acknowledge that the problem exists.”
The teenager who accosted Mukker has not been named, but Darien police have disclosed the suspect is 17-years-old. He is in the hospital now and a court date will not be set until he is discharged, officials stated.