AFTER suffering racial abuse on the high street in Malmesbury, a Sikh blogger has donated his compensation money to the charity that supported him after the event.

Navjot Sawhney, 25 and from Malmesbury, was taking photos in town early last year, when a man got out of his car and starting shouting racist abuse at him.

“I'd suffered racism before, but never so blatant,” said Navjot at the time.

“But my first reaction was to shrug the incident off. Racism is part of life. I didn't even consider reporting it.”

The event was witnessed by Alison Cross-Jones, general manager at HEALS of Malmesbury, who took down the man’s number plate and encouraged Navjot to pursue the incident.

He took the offender to court, where he pleaded guilty to the charges of racially aggravated behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress, and was ordered to pay a fine.

After receiving his compensation last week for the incident, Navjot decided he wanted to donate the money to HEALS in light of the help Alison had given him.

“I wouldn't have pursued the incident if it wasn't for Alison who said that you can't let that go,” said Navjot.

“[HEALS] do awesome work in helping people [in] the local community.

“The money could help the person who's escaped domestic violence and is having to set up home with nothing, or it might help towards a wig for some of HEALS service users with cancer.

“I knew almost instantly when I was told that I was going to be compensated, the money should go to charity. I've always wanted to help people and this donation will help change the lives for people.

“I think the whole thing is pretty symbolic, it's all come full circle. I turned a negative around into a positive contribution to charity.”

Alison Cross-Jones said: “The event itself was shocking, the verbal abuse was horrendous.

“From my point of view Nav was willing to accept it. It’s part of his life, and I said it wasn’t acceptable; we supported him in reporting it to the police and taking it further.

“I am very pleased that a valuable lesson has been learned. Racism is not something to be tolerated or expected on any level.

“We’re delighted Nav has chosen HEALS as the recipient of his funds; we will use it to help people who are in need at the moment.

“We’re helping a few people who are homeless, and we have some very urgent cases we are dealing with. It will go to help those others.”

To keep up to date with Navjot’s blog visit facebook.com/navsproject365 or to donate to HEALS visit healsmalmesbury.com/donate