Thaindian News

London, Aug 30 (ANI): In the midst of the Surrey Guru Nanak Temple shooting during a wedding ceremony, Gurpreet Singh, a newscaster at the Punjabi Radio in India, has said that he is in touch with the family members of the suspect, Radio India managing director Maninder Gill, and believes that his boss could have fired only in “self-defence”.

“He’s a very easygoing person; he doesn’t lose his temper so easily,” he said. “I can only speculate. Whatever I have heard is that people were trying to attack him and he acted in self-defence,” The Globe and Mail quoted Singh, as saying.

Singh speculates that the shooting might be the result of a continuing feud he traces to an April visit to British Columbia by Punjabi government minister Sewa Singh Sekhwan.

An apparent insult directed at the minister by a man close to Surrey businessman Harjit Singh Atwal sparked an acrimonious barrage between Atwal and the radio station, the paper reports.

Although Singh says he has no clue about what led to escalate a parking-lot argument into a shootout outside the temple, but said he thinks Gill would have fired only in self-defence.

Gill, who has been called the “czar of Punjabi entertainment,” has run Radio India since 1999, after making a name for himself as a promoter of Punjabi culture and music in Surrey.

Fifty-four-year-old Harjit Singh Atwal was hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries after being shot on Saturday in the thigh in the parking lot of the Guru Nanak Temple in Surrey. (ANI)