Two “Jatt” brothers were fined over $9,000 by the BC Human Rights Tribunal for calling work colleague a “Chamaar”. During a fight at a BC taxi company Christmas party in 2018, Manoj Bhangu was called ‘Chamaar’ by his two work colleagues Inderjit Dhillon and Avninder Dhillon. Chamaar refers to the name of Bhangu’s Dalit caste which is also considered an insulting word in Punjabi language.

By R. Paul Dhillon – Editor DESIBUZZCanada

SURREY – Two “Jatt” brothers were fined over $9,000 by the BC Human Rights Tribunal for calling work colleague a “Chamaar”.

During a fight at a BC taxi company Christmas party in 2018, Manoj Bhangu was called ‘Chamaar’ by his two work colleagues Inderjit Dhillon and Avninder Dhillon. Chamaar refers to the name of Bhangu’s Dalit caste which is also considered an insulting word in Punjabi language.

Bhangu filed a complaint with the BC human rights tribunal and recently the Tribunal ruled that the Dhillons must pay the victim of racial more than $9,000 in compensation. In a ruling issued on March 15, tribunal Judge Sonia Pighin found Bhangu was discriminated against on grounds of his caste, location of origin, religion and race.

According to Judge Pighin’s ruling, two incidents occurred in December 2018. One was the Dhillon brothers making racial comments against Bhangu and the other one was physically assaulting him. 

Bhangu was a driver and board director in the taxi company. 

According to the written verdict, there were many witnesses present at the time of the incident and heard the Dhillon brothers repeatedly punching and saying, “Yes this is Chamar, kill this, beat this Chamar”. 

Pighin wrote that witnesses provided unanimous evidence in the second dispute and I found their evidence more plausible than that of the Dhillon brothers.