By Lucy-Claire Saunders

Enjoying a community sporting event on a field in sunny South Vancouver, Jagdarshan Singh Samra was set upon by four young thugs and beaten so badly with a baton, he may lose his right eye.

Recovering at home in the care of his family, Samra considers the grim fates of two young Indio-Canadian men who weren’t so "lucky" — an Abbotsford teen and a Richmond man both murdered within days of the viscious assault on Samra, who wonders, "What’s happening to our community?"

Police are still searching for suspects after the Bollywood actor and producer was violently assaulted at a soccer and kabaddi tournament at Memorial South Park on Victoria Day.

"I was just standing there watching the games when somebody hit me from behind with a baton," the 62-year-old actor told the South Asian Post, in an exclusive interview.

"I fell to the ground and was attacked by four or five guys in their mid-30s. It was totally unprovoked.

"This city is just getting too violent and something needs to change — I’m a 62-year-old man and I was attacked by a bunch of young thugs."

Samra was rushed to Vancouver General Hospital by ambulance where he received 10 stitches to his head and treatment for his broken nose and shattered eye socket.

He said he will find out this week whether he will be able to see out of his right eye again.

The Bollywood actor, who has been featured in over 20 films, was standing with hundreds of spectators when several young Indo-Canadian males pushed him to the ground and then proceeded to kick him and beat him with a baton, said Const. Tim Fanning of the Vancouver Police Department.

"He received a laceration on the top of his head, to the back of his head, to his left leg and a large laceration in his right eye," said Const. Fanning.

Police have several suspects, the South Asian Post has learned, but no arrests have been made.

According to several witnesses, the attackers loitered around for several minutes after the beating and when they began to walk away, someone from the crowd reminded them that they shouldn’t leave the baton on the ground.

The assailants grabbed the baton and then fled, running right through a soccer game.

"This has hurt me very badly, emotionally and physically," said Samra, his voice wavering with emotion.

"But I am thankful that I survived such a brutal attack. I’m just grateful to God."

Samra, who moved to Vancouver in 1972 and lives with his wife, son and daughter-in-law in Surrey, says he knows one of the suspects from his home village in India. He believes he was targeted because of a lawsuit over a land dispute in the village of Samri.

On a recent trip to his homeland village in Punjab, Samra discovered a family squatting on his ancestoral lands, erecting a home and refusing to leave or pay rent.

Samra filed suit against the alleged squatters, and returned to B.C. where he has been waiting for the legal process to begin in India.

"The land is so small it doesn’t even seem worth mentioning," he said. "The lawsuit is going to take its course and whoever wins, wins."

Samra said he could offer no details of the case as the lawsuit is ongoing, but regrets the matter has got so far out of hand.

The case is an intercontinental twist on a growing criminal problem plaguing the Indian state of Punjab, where the majority of Metro Vancouver’s Indians hail from.

Over the last two years, there have been at least two dozen contract killings involving Non-Resident Indians, or NRIs, in Punjab — a disturbing number of them involving Canadians.

Indian police and legal experts tell the South Asian Post that the worrying trend is rising because the culprits believe that India cannot extradite them.

In many of the cases, poorly paid Indian policemen play a role in the killings or help cover-up evidence after getting paid in overseas dollars, anything between $5,000 and $125,000.

In most cases, broken marriages, illicit affairs and property disputes are the main reasons why NRIs are ordering people killed.

In this case, troubles in India appear to have found their way onto a Vancouver playing field, as dozens of sports fans and families looked on.

"This happened in one country but is being brought to a different continent. It doesn’t make sense to me," said Samra.

"We’re from the same village — I’m his uncle," added Samra, alluding to the identity of one of his assailants. "He could have come to me — talked to me."

At Memorial South Park on the day of the viscious attack, crowds gathered to watch soccer and kabaddi, a team sport popular throughout South Asia, especially in Punjab. The game, best described as full-contact basketball, also has a large following in Metro Vancouver.

The Victoria Day kabaddi tournament drew hundreds of spectators including MP for Vancouver South, Ujjal Dosanjh and Vision mayoral candidate, Raymond Louie.

Samra, who is a sports aficionado, is a star on the soccer field as well as on the silver screen.

Currently a member of Vancouver’s Ross Street Temple’s Hurricanes Mens Open Team, he has played for Punjab State in the State Championships as a forward and continued playing when he moved to Canada, switching his position to sweeper, as he prefers a bird’s eye view of the field — a talent that did not serve him well on the day he was brutally set upon.

The brazen attack sent shockwaves through the community, which is also coming to terms with the unsolved murders of Harminder Hans, 18, and Bhupinder Singh Benning, 27, killed last Saturday morning in two separate incidents — respectively, a knifing in Abbotsford and a targeted shooting in Richmond.

These deaths are just the latest in a litany of murder that has claimed the lives of over 100 young Indo-Canadian men since the 1990s.

Avtar Hoti has known Samra for several years.

"He’s a very good-hearted man, an open-minded and just a nice human being," said Hoti. "I coach my daughter’s team, the Hurricanes Women’s Open, and he doesn’t have a daughter on the team but he classifies all the girls as his daughters."

Hoti said the Indian sports community was stunned by the assault on such a "great guy."

"Whatever happened to him is just terrible, it was a cowardly thing to do," said Hoti. "The whole community is just shocked. People keep asking why did no one step in but when you get a large crowd like that some people feel intimated for stepping in."

Samra said he feels lucky that he will eventually be able to walk away from the crime, which initially left him strapped to an ambulance spineboard in a state of bloodied confusion.

He said he hopes his injuries — particularly his fractured eye socket — will not affect his ability to continue playing soccer, one of his many passions.

"When something like this happens, you always ask, ‘Why?’ But this is what life is all about," he said. "You never know what’s going to happen. And when it does, the only lesson we should learn is that nobody is going to live forever, so let’s be decent to each other."