By Craig Kapitan of 
Auckland-based Sikh religious leader Gurinderpal Brar was last year found guilty of orchestrating the knife attack on radio host Harnek Singh (inset). Photo: NZ Herald / Jason Oxenham
A charismatic Auckland-based religious leader with two popular Sikh temples and thousands of devotees was behind a bloody but ultimately failed plot to murder an internationally renowned radio host in the driveway of his South Auckland home, it can now be revealed.
Name suppression has lapsed for Gurinderpal Brar - referred to by his followers as "Baba Ji", meaning father - who is serving a 13-and-a-half-year prison sentence after he was convicted in the High Court at Auckland in October of attempted murder.
Co-defendant Jobanpreet Singh, described during their lengthy trial as a devoted follower who was also in love with Brar's daughter, is set for sentencing today.
Prosecutors said he was following the temple leader's orders in December 2020 when he and others ambushed Harnek Singh under the cover of night as he returned to his Wattle Downs home from a marathon four-hour broadcast at the Papatoetoe-based Sikh temple where he records for his hundreds of thousands of listeners in New Zealand, India, the United States and elsewhere.
Harnek Singh honked his car horn repeatedly, signalling for help, before the attackers managed to smash a side window of his ute and stab him more than 40 times.
Jurors were repeatedly reminded during the trial of Brar's high-ranking status among New Zealand's roughly 45,000 adherents to Sikhism, especially among those "towards the more fundamentalist end of the spectrum".
He was an immigrant from India whose humble beginnings as a truck driver in South Auckland a decade earlier had been all but forgotten by 2020. He had started out holding prayer groups in his living room on Friday nights. Within a few years it generated enough interest to build his own temple, then two. One currently operates in Rotorua. The other, in East Tāmaki, is where witnesses said the murder plot was hatched.
"His influence reaches beyond these shores," prosecutor Luke Radich told jurors during his opening address for Brar's trial last year. "You will hear him describe how he has followers around the world - and how people sometimes pay for him to travel overseas to preach to his followers.
"He is a man who describes himself as being like a saint, higher than a priest and just below the 'gurus'. He is a man who inspired devotion and obedience."
Those words were not previously allowed to be reported, however.
Brar's identity at the time had been suppressed to protect his fair-trial rights for three unrelated assault with a weapon charges that were then pending in Manukau District Court. In addition to not using his name, the media was barred from describing him as a religious or temple leader. He was instead described as someone who had developed a hatred for the radio host due to their starkly different interpretations of Sikhism.
Suppression was no longer necessary after Brar pleaded guilty in December - weeks after he was sentenced to prison for the attempted murder - to the three lesser assault charges. District Court documents state he beat three congregation members with tree branches in 2015, leaving each man with facial bruising. One of the men, who was also attacked with a metal kitchen utensil, also suffered a bloody nose and swollen eye.
Prosecutors never alleged that Brar was present during the near-fatal attack on the radio host. But he was "the heart of the plot" who used his influence to recruit others to do the dirty work for him, they said.
"Everyone else involved in these acts were people who were devotees at Mr Brar's temple in East Tāmaki - younger men who were, in a very literal way, devoted to him and his teachings with an extreme level of commitment," Radich told jurors. "It was this level of commitment that the Crown says Mr Brar relied upon to effect his plan to put an end to Harnek Singh."
He described a man whose success - and ego - grew too quickly, to the point where he expected followers to touch his feet and exerted considerable control over his followers' everyday lives, such as their relationships and employment. He claimed in a police interview to have saved 300,000 people from alcoholism and 100,000 from suicide or family violence.
"What's the point of him saying this?" Radich asked jurors at the end of the trial. "Well, it might be to present an over-inflated view of himself, or he might actually believe these things, or they might be significant if [he] believes he is above human beings and literally close to the gods and infused with some form of divinity. "
The prosecutor emphasised during his closing address that he didn't consider Brar a "monster".
"He's a human being and perhaps that's the point," he said. "The ego that comes from having a rapidly expanding number of followers, coupled with religious fervour, is a dangerous combination in the wrong hands."
The maximum sentence for attempted murder is 14 years' imprisonment. During Brar's sentencing in November, Justice Mark Woolford said the only reason he received a 13-and-a-half-year sentence instead of the maximum was because he deserved a modest credit for the time he had already spent on electronically monitored bail.
The judge also ordered a minimum period of imprisonment of nine years before Brar could apply for parole, citing the need to protect the community from violent "religious fanaticism".
The courtroom was filled with Brar's followers, many of whom bowed to him as he was led off to begin serving his sentence.
This article was originally published by the New Zealand Herald.
