Indianapolis Sikhs Face Lingering Grief, Doubt and Fear

• A 19-year-old gunman killed eight people, including four Sikhs, at an Indianapolis-area FedEx facility in 2021.
• Anti-Sikh hate crimes have increased every year since the FBI began tracking them in 2015, reaching 94 in 2020.
• Some worry about the tendency of Sikhs to carry on. “You don’t learn to grieve because you were never taught it,” said one community member.

Komal Sahi was home on the night of April 15, 2021, when reports began circulating of a shooting at the FedEx ground operations facility in Indianapolis where his mother had started working the previous week.

“It was so shocking,” said Sahi, an immigration attorney in suburban Indianapolis. “This warehouse had a lot of Sikh workers. Hearing my mom, it was like, you make friends because you work with people like you. It was a community. Everyone knew someone who worked there.