New York, March 1

In a first of its kind lawsuit, a decorated Sikh-American soldier has sued the US military, alleging that because of his religious beliefs he is being subjected to “discriminatory” testing that no other soldier in the US Army goes through.Captain Simratpal Singh, 28, was in December last year granted a temporary religious accommodation to serve in the US Army while maintaining his Sikh turban, unshorn hair and beard.The accommodation, a rare exception, was scheduled to remain in effect until March 31 but in an unprecedented step backward, the US Army recently ordered Singh to report today for “extraordinary, non-standard additional testing as a precondition for remaining in the Army”, international law firm McDermott Will & Emery, representing Singh, said. — PTI