The shooting at the temple

On the evening of 17 April 2026, preparations for the Sikh spring festival of Vaisakhi were underway at the Gurudwara Mata Sahib Kaur Ji cultural centre in Covo, a small town in the province of Bergamo. A group of worshippers had gathered when a 29-year-old man, later named by authorities as Gurjant Singh, drove up to the scene. From the driver's seat, he approached the cluster of men, drew a firearm and fired multiple rounds. Rajinder Singh, 47, was hit by seven bullets, four of which struck his head; Gurmit Singh, 48, took six bullets, two to the head. Both men died where they fell. A third person, Suchet Singh, was also targeted but escaped with his life. After the shooting, Singh fled in his car, later abandoning it on the SP198 provincial road in the neighbouring town of Calcio.

The feud over the temple

The motive, reconstructed by Carabinieri investigators from the Bergamo investigative unit, lay not in random violence but in a long-simmering conflict inside the small Sikh community of the Bergamo plain. Since the renewal of the board of the Covo cultural association, the community had split into two hostile camps: one linked to the victims and based in Covo, the other rooted across the fields in Antegnate. Rajinder Singh, a former president of the centre who had recently stepped aside, had been instrumental in picking the new leadership, drawing fierce opposition from the Antegnate group. The months before the shooting were marked by screaming arguments, threats and formal police complaints. On the day of Vaisakhi, the dispute turned lethal.

The escape to England

Immediately after the murder, Gurjant Singh left Italy. Detectives traced his route first to France and then to the United Kingdom, where he settled in Birmingham, a city with one of the largest South Asian diasporas in Europe. Italian prosecutors obtained a European arrest warrant and enlisted the help of British police. On the evening of 22 July 2026, exactly 15 weeks after the murder, Singh was located and arrested in Birmingham. He is now held in a prison in England and awaits a court ruling on his extradition back to Italy, where he will face charges of double homicide and attempted murder.

Awaiting extradition

The arrest marks the closure of a three-month international manhunt, but the court proceedings are just beginning. In Bergamo, a judge had already placed Singh under pre-trial detention in absentia. Once extradited, he will be transferred to an Italian prison to answer for the shooting. The case has shaken the Sikh community in Lombardy and is likely to reignite scrutiny over the governance of religious centres born from migrant communities.