A Long Island man was charged with a hate crime yesterday in the beating of a Sikh man on a Queens sidewalk on Sunday, the police said.
The suspect, Salvatore Maceli, 26, of Valley Stream, was one of several people involved in a confrontation with the Sikh, Rajinder Singh Khalsa Ji, 54, who was punched and kicked into unconsciousness, investigators said. Mr. Maceli, who is charged with assault, faces up to four years in prison if convicted under a 2000 state law that classifies racially and ethnically motivated assaults as hate crimes, and the police said others who participated in the attack may also be charged.
Mr. Khalsa Ji, a limousine driver from Queens and a spiritual leader for Sikhs in New York City, had been walking with another Sikh man past a catering hall, Il Palazzo di Villa Russo, at Lefferts Boulevard and 101st Street in Richmond Hill, when the assault occurred.
In interviews, Mr. Khalsa Ji and his companion, Singh Gurcharan, the owner of an Indian restaurant near the catering hall, said that Mr. Khalsa Ji's assailants were drunk, and that they ridiculed him for wearing a turban, calling it "dirty curtains."
The incident underscored the vulnerability of Sikhs, who are natives of India and who wear turbans as a symbol of their religion.
A police official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said yesterday that the attack was apparently precipitated by a group of women who had emerged from a christening ceremony at a catering hall. When they encountered Mr. Khalsa Ji and Mr. Gurcharan on the sidewalk, the women, who had been drinking, made disparaging remarks about the men's turbans, the official said.
When the two men responded angrily, pointing out the religious significance of their turbans, word spread among men inside the catering hall that women in their party were being harassed, the police official said. Some of the men responded violently, with Mr. Maceli taking the lead in the assault, the official said.
Mr. Gurcharan fled and escaped injury. Mr. Khalsa Ji was released yesterday from Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, where he was treated for cuts and a broken nose.
Mr. Khalsa Ji's assailants fled in two cars, leaving him unconscious on the sidewalk, Mr. Gurcharan said.