Gurpreet Singh is no stranger to being stared at. Few Sikhs are, after September 11th. As mandated by Sikhism, the devout are required to wear a turban and to maintain uncut hair, including on the face, an appearance that has unfortunately come to be associated with the Taliban’s version of Islam.

After September 11th, Singh, a cheery 24-year-old who finds it hard to speak for too long without smiling, was called Taliban and Osama, but he dismissed those incidents as arising out of ignorance.

More recently, he faced a more serious threat on his way home to Syosset on the Long Island Railroad.

On March 1, Singh was traveling home when he noticed a roughly six-foot-tall Caucasian male—blond, wearing a long woolen coat and drinking Budweiser out of a brown paper bag—staring at him. “He was staring in my direction so intently I checked if there was someone behind me,” he told India Abroad. “Since there was no one, I just smiled at him just to see if he was threatening or not, but he continued to stare at me, cold, with absolutely no expression on his face.”

At Jamaica, Singh edged in to let people get in and get off and got closer to the man. “So I said, ‘Hi!’ to him to break the tension, and his reply was, ‘Where are you getting off?” Singh recalled . “Syosset,” Singh replied. When he replied, “good,” Singh asked the man if he was happy about that. “He said, ‘Yes, I am,” Singh says. He kept staring and after a while, turned his body around so he could look at me.

At that point, Singh admits he felt a frisson of fear. “A huge number of things were going through my mind. I thought of the repression Sikhs had suffered through history and how they had come through all of it and I was not afraid anymore, I was ready to defend myself if need be,” he says. “In any case, he was drinking so I walked to the other end of the car.”

To his surprise, the man followed him and stood right in front of Singh, “reeking of alcohol, shoving me with his chest and almost stepping on my toe.” Singh asked the man if he was trying to follow him to which he received a reply in the affirmative. “I want you off this train,’ he told me,” Singh said.

“Then I realized he might do something stupid, so I moved away because he could physically threaten me.”

While he was walking away he heard the man shout, “Get off this train!”

“Then the most amazing thing happened!” Singh recalls. ”This stranger offered me a seat and told me not to worry. When I sat down I was thinking maybe this guy would come and try and grab my turban or something. Sikh history came back to me again. I was telling myself I had no reason to be afraid and I felt my confidence returning.”

By that time the train was approaching the station and Singh’s savior got up to get off. He first went to the drunk and told him to stay away from Singh or to move to the next car. What no one knew at that time was that the guy standing up for Singh was an off-duty NYPD officer, Captain Stephen Hughes of the Midtown North Precinct.

“It became clear this guy was not going to let this go. I knew I couldn’t leave it at that,” Hughes told India Abroad. “He asked how I could be ‘standing up for these Muslims, they killed four of my friends.’”

Hughes said he didn’t know what faith Singh belonged to but was sure he was not Muslim. “You don’t even know whether he’s Muslim and he had nothing to do with September 11th,” Hughes told him, upon which he was accused of standing up for Singh. “So I told him if he went after Gurpreet he would first have to go after me. It was obvious he was trying to provoke me into starting something,” Hughes remembers. “So I told him to move to the next car and he wouldn’t. I didn’t want to fight but I wasn’t going to back down either.”

Hughes then grabbed him by the waist and tried to move him out of the car when his foot caught in the doors. “Most people thought the argument was between the two of us and a dark-skinned gentleman asked me to release the doors so the train could move,” Hughes said. “I explained the situation to him and what was going on.”

“It was amazing, this gentleman, who was about six feet and well-built, then assured Hughes he wouldn’t let any harm come to me,” says Singh. “Both complete strangers ready to fight another stranger for my rights. That’s the beauty of America.”

Hughes told India Abroad it was obviously a racially motivated incident. Through it all, Hughes did not identify himself as a police officer. “In such situations, sometimes identifying yourself as a police officer can have the opposite effect and escalate the situation,” he explained.

For Singh, the experience was particularly ironic because he was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. “My family had to leave Afghanistan because of the oppression by Muslim fundamentalist groups and here I was being targeted for being wrongly suspected of being Taliban.”

Singh’s family moved to India. “From there we came to America in search of the religious freedom we wanted and found it here,” he says. “I was only six, I am American and it was so wonderful to see something like this happen!”

By this time the conductor had arrived and the man was moved to the next car. But it wasn’t over. “He continued to stare at me from the next car even while people around me were trying to talk to me and put me at ease,” Singh says.

The conductor called the police and at Hicksville the man was arrested. At least three other people signed on as witnesses to the incident. “I don’t even know their names!”

Singh is determined to see this through. “Initially I was hesitant, but then I decided enough was enough. Sometimes this is the only way to let people know there is a price to pay for this kind of behavior.”

Good Samaritan Captain Hughes told India Abroad: “I am prepared to go all the way in backing up Singh, in court if it comes to that.”

The hearing is set for June 11.