Mom of Sikh student accused of bomb threat asking cops to drop charges

The mother of a Sikh middle school student accused of threatening to detonate a bomb at his school is asking police to drop charges, Associated Press reports from Arlington, Texas. Twelve-year-old Armaan Singh was arrested 11 December after police say he admitted to making the threat while they were questioning him without his parents present. He spent three days in juvenile detention before being released and was suspended from school. His mother, Gurdeep Kaur, says a classmate asked whether a battery in Armaan’s backpack was a bomb. She says he said it wasn’t, but the classmate told the teacher he said it was. Police say Armaan’s religion played no part in his arrest. Reports of Sikhs being harassed have increased with the recent rise in anti-Islamic sentiment. The boy’s cousin wrote about Armaan’s ordeal in a Facebook post this week. The boy was kept behind the bars for three days, before being released on Monday, Ginee Haer wrote in this Facebook post which went viral and was shared by thousands of people.

This goofball on the left in this picture is my 12 year old cousin, Armaan Singh Sarai. He was born and raised in Texas… Posted by Ginee Haer on  Tuesday, 15 December 2015

Sarai’s parents were worried about him last Friday as he did not return from school. They started calling police departments in the area only to find out he was sent to a juvenile facility, she said. [caption id=“attachment_2550494” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  12-year-old Armaan Singh with his cousin. Image courtesy: Facebook[/caption] According to the media reports, police said they went to Nichols Junior High School in Dallas, Texas, after a student told a teacher that Sarai was planning to blow up the school. Quoting police spokesman Lt. Christopher Cook, The Dallas Morning News said in its report, “People have got to learn they cannot make these types of threats, which cause alarm, which cause evacuations. Just because you say it’s a joke, it doesn’t get you out of trouble.” However, Armaan’s family said that a classmate was behind this prank which led to the three-day detention of Armaan at the juvenile facility. According to Armaan, the classmate was ‘kidding’ on Friday when he said at the start of a history class that he would tell the teacher Armaan had a bomb. A day earlier, the classmate had joked that Armaan’s backpack, which had a battery charger in it, looked like a bomb. Described as a “goofball” in the Facebook post, Armaan has undergone three heart surgeries. “I thought it was a joke, so I started laughing and he started laughing,” The Dallas Morning News quoted the 12-year-old as saying. “The next thing you know, I’m reading with my friend and police come in, grab me and take me outside.” Haer, in her post, said:

“It hurts my heart and boils my blood that there are people stupid enough out there not only accusing us, but our innocent children of being terrorists! It sickens me even more that there are people even more stupid out there, taking their word for it. My cousin is a minor and was arrested without any evidence or guardian present! This should show you how f**ked up the system is!”

The incident reminds you of a similar story that unfolded a couple of months ago in Texas where a teenager Muslim boy was arrested because he carried a homemade clock to his school. 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed was pulled from class and taken to a detention center after teachers at his suburban Dallas high school mistook his homemade clock top for a bomb. The boy was also placed in handcuffs and suspended for coming to school. After the incident went viral on social media, Ahmed received support from the likes of Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg. “I built the clock to impress my teacher, but when I showed it to her, she thought it was a threat to her. So it was really sad she took the wrong impression of it,” Ahmed said at a news conference after he was released. He has since left the school and the country. Watch Armaan talk about his ordeal here.