**Government need to take urgent action as racially aggravated hate crimes targeting Sikhs are on the increase and not being properly recognised or addressed ** London – 2 November 2025
Last week West Midland Police reported a woman in her 50s was assaulted in Wolverhampton in a “racially aggravated” attack by a group of four or five men in their 20s[1].
A handheld electrical stun device was used in the assault and attempts were made to hit the woman with a metal bar. Detective Inspector Racheal Allen, from West Midlands Police’s Major Crime Unit said: “This was a nasty assault with a racially aggravated element and we’re working hard to find those responsible.”
The attack took place on 27 October and a day before Sikhs took their campaign to Westminster[2] for government to address Anti-Sikh hate following three other racially aggravated attacks in Wolverhampton, Oldbury and Walsall.
Two of the attacks in Oldbury and Walsall were in quick succession and were vicious racially aggravated rapes of two Sikh women in their 20s. These sorts of attacks are unprecedented and have sent shockwaves across the Sikh community.
It became a requirement more than 4 years ago, from April 2021, for police forces to provide the Home Office with the ethnicity of victims of racially or religiously aggravated offences. However, in the latest information released by the Home Office on 9 October 2025 the victims ethnicity was provided in only 40% of the offences for the year ending March 2025.
Our analysis of Home Office data shows non-whites are ten times more likely to experience hate crimes than whites and we believe that ethnic minorities who are the most visible, like Sikhs, will be experiencing the highest levels of hate crime.
Dabinderjit Singh OBE, a Lead Executive at the Sikh Federation (UK) said:
“Today Preet Kaur Gill MP has revealed in a tweet[3] the latest racially aggravated assault in Wolverhampton almost a week ago was also targeting a Sikh woman.”
“Case law has defined Sikhs as a distinct ethnic group for over 40 years, but the police are failing to comply with equalities legislation by deliberately not mentioning or recording the ethnicity of the victim as Sikh.”
“This is exactly why last Tuesday we called upon the Home Office not to rely on the police to correctly identify the religion and ethnicity of the victim, but to use anonymised person-level data from the Census 2021 to provide more accurate information on the identity of victims.”
“We are certain the Office for National Statistics (ONS) analysis will show Anti-Sikh hate crimes are twenty times higher than officially recognised and reported.”
“MPs are meeting Sarah Jones, the Policing Minister later this week and we are confident the Home Office want more accurate data on religion and ethnicity so they will take up our innovative proposal.”
The National Statistician at the ONS has confirmed to the Sikh Federation (UK) that data matching of this sort is possible and will provide much more accurate data on the identity of victims of hate crimes and could also result in savings on administrative work for the police.
We are confident Home Office Ministers will be interested in taking forward our proposal as the Labour government has introduced new policies and reaffirmed previous pledges to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG), with a specific focus on supporting rape victims and improving prosecution rates.
ENDS Jaspal Singh Lead Executive Sikh Federation (UK)