San Francisco: A group of Sikh men were harassed by security staff and denied access to a stadium in San Diego city in California for an American football game because they were wearing turbans.
Verinder Malhi and his friends, who drove seven hours from Fresno to see the Broncos-Chargers game on December 6, were told that they could be allowed to enter only after they remove their turbans, 10News reported.
“Three of my buddies, they had turbans on, and it (was like, you guys got to take the turbans off,” said Malhi, one of the Sikh men.
Security guards finally allowed the men into the Qualcomm stadium with their turbans, but Malhi claimed a security supervisor told him that if they ever come back, they cannot wear turbans.
“It's bad, I mean, this is embarrassing for me, because we are Americans at the end of the day. And we are not supposed to be afraid of fellow Americans,” he said.
Their humiliation was not-yet complete and their car was subjected to a search by a bomb-sniffing dog.
A fearful fan called police and claimed that three men wearing turbans were fiddling with items in their trunk, and had then left the parking lot. Police told the news agency that the dog cleared the car.
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