Juno News - July 25, 2026


How dangerous are Sikh knives？


Episode Stats


Length

1 minute

Words per minute

183.27

Word count

336

Sentence count

17

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 We've heard Sikhs talk about how the kirpan is a religious symbol, but what about all the times
00:00:05.560 they've been used as a weapon? Juno News has compiled a list of times that the Sikh's religious
00:00:10.860 knife has been used or threatened to be used as a weapon. Starting us off with number one,
00:00:16.100 about two months ago, a 23-year-old Sikh living in the UK was found guilty of murdering 18-year-old
00:00:21.980 Henry Nowick with a kirpan. In 2008, a 13-year-old Sikh boy used a religious dagger to threaten
00:00:29.340 another student outside of school in Montreal. Police say the knife was wrapped in cloth at the
00:00:33.720 time and luckily no one was injured. In 2010, Sukhwan Singh was charged with attempted murder
00:00:38.920 after a 53-year-old man was punched and stabbed outside a Brampton Sikh temple. Now what's really
00:00:44.980 interesting about that one is that at that point, the World Sikh Organization of Canada spoke to
00:00:49.900 media stating that the Kirpan is neither a weapon nor a knife and that the Kirpan poses no safety
00:00:56.200 risk to Canadians. And shortly after that four people were injured after a fight involving a
00:01:02.380 hundred people broke out outside a Sikh temple in Brampton. Now police stated that machetes and
00:01:07.980 knives were used but they did not want to state whether any of the knives were kirpans. Although
00:01:12.680 it happened in India a 25 year old BC resident was murdered with a kirpan in 2000 and it was by
00:01:19.680 her uncle and mother who were allegedly upset that she was marrying against her family's wishes.
00:01:24.420 In 2021, in Sydney, Australia, a 14-year-old student was accused of stabbing a 16-year-old
00:01:31.560 student at school with a kirpan. Now, the victim did survive, but this led to knives, including
00:01:36.900 kirpans, being banned at schools. These are just a couple examples. If you'd like to read more,
00:01:41.520 you can visit junonews.com. As well, we have a petition going on right now to ban the kirpan. 1.00
00:01:47.040 If you'd like to sign, you can visit banthekirpan.com. 1.00