Australian Indians Behind Viral Petition in Support of Truck Driver Accused of Killing Three in Florida

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.

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