Huge Aus move as world shocked by crash
A petition started by Australia’s Indian community calling for leniency for a truck driver who allegedly killed three people while making an illegal U-turn on a Florida highway has amassed more than three million signatures in a “growing global outcry”.
Illegal immigrant Harjinder Singh, 28, faces three charges of vehicular homicide and up to 45 years in prison over the horrific caught-on-video crash on August 12 while he was driving an 18-wheeler.
The case has sparked nationwide outrage in the US and prompted an immediate halt on commercial truck driver visas by the Trump administration, while Indians and diaspora communities have rallied behind Singh.
“This was a tragic accident — not a deliberate act,” the petition reads.
“While accountability matters, the severity of the charges against him does not align with the circumstances of the incident. The driver has no prior record and fully co-operated with authorities.”
The petition, started by Manisha Kaushal from Adelaide and signed “collective Punjabi youth”, calls on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Executive Clemency Board to “re-examine and reduce the sentence” for Singh if he is convicted.
It requests that authorities “impose a proportionate and reasonable sentence that reflects the reality this was a tragic accident, not an intentional act of harm”, “allow parole eligibility after a fair portion of the sentence has been served, promoting rehabilitation, accountability, and the chance for a second opportunity in life”, and “consider alternative sentencing measures — such as restorative justice, counselling, or community service — that uphold responsibility while also fostering compassion and true rehabilitation”.
A number of supporters of the petition have shared videos reading out the same statement.
“It was an accident, he made a terrible mistake, not a deliberate choice to harm anyone,” one woman said. “He was working hard to support his family, like so many of us, and one wrong decision changed everything. A 45-year prison sentence is not justice.”
The petition has attracted more than 3.1 million signatures in five days, making it the fastest-growing campaign of 2025, according to Change.org, which noted the story had “resonated across borders” and “become a transnational movement”.
A spokeswoman for Change.org told news.com.au that the petition was “actually started in Australia, and we’ve seen especially strong engagement there, particularly within Punjabi and Sikh communities”.
“While we do not share exact signer counts by country, Australia has been one of the most active regions outside of India, reflecting the global solidarity that has made this the fastest-growing petition of 2025,” she said.
“In fact, nearly 50 additional petitions have also been started in Australia on behalf of Harjinder Singh.”
In total there have been some 1450 related petitions started in more than nine countries, “a reflection of how people everywhere are engaging in a debate about fairness and proportional sentencing”, the spokeswoman said.
“Among those voices, Punjabi and Sikh communities have shown especially strong solidarity — from villages in Punjab to diaspora hubs like Brampton, Surrey, and Melbourne. In the US, communities in California and New York have also added their support to a growing global outcry.”
A rival petition calling for the “deportation” of supporters of Singh’s commutation has been signed nearly 74,000 times.
Singh’s family in his home village in India’s Punjab region have spoken out since news of his arrest, calling for him to get a more lenient sentence.
“His age is 28 years, and if he gets 45 years of jail, then you can imagine what will be the condition of his family,” relative Dilbagh Singh told the Times of India, speaking from the village of Rataul, close to the Pakistani border.
Indian politicians have also waded into the controversy, saying the visa ban would unfairly target the Punjabi community.
“Punjabi and Sikh drivers make up 20 per cent of the United States’ trucking industry,” Harsimrat Kaur Badal, a politician for the Punjabi-nationalist party Shiromani Akali Dal, told the Times of India.
“Any mass-level action against them would have a detrimental effect on trucking families and would be discriminatory.”
Global not-for-profit United Sikhs said “we are saddened by the loss of life in the tragic accident” and “grieve with the families impacted and offer our condolences”.
“We are also in touch with the family of the accused, Harjinder Singh and are advocating for equity and that the law must be appropriately and uniformly applied and those threatening and spewing discriminatory rhetoric and disinformation must be held to account,” the group wrote on X.
“We call on everyone to come together in times of tragedy rather than exploit them for political grandstanding and furthering personal agendas.”
According to the Department of Home Affairs, the Indian-born population is now the second-largest migrant group in Australia behind the UK.
The number of Indian migrants more than doubled in 10 years since 2013, with 845,800 living in Australia as of June 2023.
That equates to 10.3 per cent of the country’s overseas-born population and 3.2 per cent of Australia’s total population.
Sikhs have made up a large number of those migrants.
As of the 2021 there were 210,400 Sikhs in the country, a number that has nearly tripled since the 2011 Census, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
Punjabi was the fastest-growing language in Australia, with more than 239,000 people speaking it at home — an 80 per cent increase from the 2016 Census — making it the most popular Indian subcontinental language ahead of Hindi (197,132) and Nepali (133,068) and the fifth largest non-English language behind Mandarin, Arabic, Vietnamese and Cantonese.
Out of 239,000 Punjabi speakers, more than 209,000 were from the Sikh religion.
Horror crash kills three
Singh made a hard left turn on the Florida Turnpike near Fort Pierce and attempted to cross the median through an “Official Use Only” pass at 3pm on Thursday August 12, authorities said.
As it blocked all lanes of oncoming traffic, a mini-van then slammed into the trailer at full speed, becoming wedged underneath and killing a 37-year-old Pompano Beach woman, a 30-year-old Florida City man and a 54-year-old Miami man, Treasure Coast Newspapers reported.
The two passengers died at the scene, while the driver was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he later died of his injuries.
Neither Singh nor a passenger in the semi-truck with him at the time was injured, the Florida Highway Patrol said.
Shocking video from inside the truck cab window shows Singh apparently completely unaffected at the moment of impact, calmly putting his vehicle into park and turning the engine off.
Singh was arrested by US Marshals in California last Thursday after fleeing to the sanctuary state — one of two where he holds a commercial driver’s license (CDL) — and flown back to Florida, according to the Florida Department of Highway Safety (FLHSMV).
Florida Lieutenant-Governor Jay Collins personally escorted Singh to Florida.
“We’re here today because of tragedy,” Mr Collins said, according to WFLA. “Three lives lost. Three Floridians’ lives ended early.”
Singh is being held on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainer and faces three counts of vehicular homicide.
“The actions taken by the defendant while operating a commercial tractor-trailer are both shocking and criminal,” FLHSMV director Dave Kerner said.
“Three people lost their lives as a result of his recklessness, and countless friends and family members will experience the pain of their loss forever.”
Hours after news of Singh’s arrest, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a pause to all issuances of commercial truck driver work visas “effective immediately”.
“The increasing number of foreign drivers operating large tractor-trailer trucks on US roads is endangering American lives and undercutting the livelihoods of American truckers,” Mr Rubio wrote on social media.
Singh entered the US illegally via the southern border in September 2018 and was processed for fast-track deportation by the first Trump administration.
But after claiming fear of being sent back to India to US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Singh was released on a $US5000 ($7700) immigration bond in January 2019 and has remained in immigration proceedings ever since.
In June 2021, the Biden administration granted him work papers that had been denied during Mr Trump’s first term, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said.
By 2023 he was able to secure a CDL in Washington state, and one in California in 2024, according to DHS.
When questioned by investigators after the accident, he failed to demonstrate English proficiency or the ability to read US highway signs, the US Department of Transportation (DOT) said.
During that interview, Singh was able to answer only two of 12 questions testing his English fluency, and identify just one out of four road signs he was shown.
US federal law has mandated for decades that CDL holders must be able to speak English “sufficiently” enough to converse with the public and read road signs — with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy signing an order in May to bolster those laws.
“This crash was a preventable tragedy directly caused by reckless decisions and compounded by despicable failures,” Mr Duffy said in a statement.
“Non-enforcement and radical immigration policies have turned the trucking industry into a lawless frontier, resulting in unqualified foreign drivers improperly acquiring licenses to operate 40-ton vehicles.”
Exactly how Singh was able to obtain a license under those parameters remains unclear, but the DOT said it intended to find out.
“We will use every tool at our disposal to hold these states and bad actors accountable,” Mr Duffy said. “President Trump and I will restore safety to our roads.”
On July 3, five weeks before the Florida tragedy, Singh had been stopped by a New Mexico State Police officer for allegedly driving 60mph in a 45mph zone.
Bodycam footage released this week showed Singh struggling with limited English after being ticketed, but he was not subjected to an English language proficiency test, which the DOT said was required by law beginning on June 25.
New Mexico State Police Chief Troy Weisler on Tuesday pushed back on claims the state was not properly enforcing English language requirements, saying “there were no communication issues between Mr Singh and the officer … therefore, there would have been no reason to initiate an ELP assessment”.
Singh is not to be confused with Harjinder Singh, a food delivery driver who was jailed in 2021 for killing an elderly couple at a western Sydney intersection.
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Frank, 83, and Carmen Sant, 81, were tragically killed in Doonside in August 2019 after Singh ignored a stop sign and T-boned the couple’s Toyota HiLux.
The Indian national had admitted to travelling more than 100km/h in the 50km/h zone at the intersection of Crawford Road and Coveny Street before the crash.
— with NY Post