Last month, two elderly Sikhs, Mewa Singh Bains, 84, and Shingara Thandi, 76, "were beaten with baseball bats in separate attacks" in a park in Surrey, Canada. [Surrey is a suburb of Vancouver.] "Thandi, who was attacked on July 19, died in hospital on Aug. 6. Bains was beaten on July 18 and died Sept. 3."

Thandi's son "said the beating obliterated his father's face" and that "he could not recognize his dad in hospital". Thandi noted, "I had to look at the rest of his body to tell that was my dad."

The perpetrators of these crimes are two teenage boys, aged 13 and 15. To the outrage of the Sikh- and Indo-Canadian communities, they were initially charged with assault and aggravated assault -- not murder. However, the charges were later upgraded to aggravated assault and murder [see previous report here].

In a separate incident that followed the beating deaths of Bains and Thandi, "A group of Sikh-Canadian senior citizens were sprayed with fire extinguisher foam from a slow-moving minivan as they sat at a picnic table" in the same exact park [see previous report here].

The Constable has said the attacks have been "targeted" and purposeful," but has stopped short of calling them racially motivated.