EW DELHI: The Sikh community in India expressed outrage on Monday at the weekend shooting death of Balbir Singh Sodhi at his gas station in Arizona, an unprovoked attack apparently motivated by terror strikes in New York and Washington.

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee raised the issue with US President Bush in a Sunday night phone call. A member of his Cabinet and other Sikh leaders met Monday with US embassy officials, calling for the US government to protect members of the minority religion.

Sodhi, 49, who had emigrated from India 10 years ago, spoke to his father, mother, wife and three children in a remote village in Punjab on Sunday.

Six hours later, he was shot dead at his gas station in Mesa, Arizona.

Male Sikhs, who are neither Arab nor Muslim, wear untrimmed beards and turbans that cover their uncut hair. Their appearance, and the ceremonial knives they carry, are a vestige of the centuries of battles the Sikhs fought against Muslim conquerors of the Punjab.

Attackers in the United States have targeted Sikh men as well Muslims and Arabs in an apparent racial and religious backlash since the terrorist attacks on the United States on last Tuesday.

In the phone call with Vajpayee, "The US President readily responded to state that such attacks should be prevented. He stated that he fully believed that the fight against terrorism was not against any one nationality, group or people," external affairs ministry said.

Robert Bogg, political counselor at the US embassy, met on Monday with Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, a Sikh who is Chemicals and Fertilizers Minister in Vajpayee's Cabinet.

"The US government is very concerned," about the attack. "It is a crime. It is wrong," PTI quoted Bogg as saying after the meeting.

MS Gill, a Sikh and former chief election commissioner of India, said one of the top US leaders should issue an appeal over radio and television urging the American public to spare the Indian migrants.

"As we understand, the problem of mistaken identity is haunting the Sikhs in America. The US administration should take immediate steps and give wide publicity to explicitly distinguish the Sikhs from the Arabs," said Kartar Singh, secretary of the Institute of Sikh studies.

Most Sikhs trace their ancestry to the Punjab area that is now divided between Pakistan and India. A former Hindu, Guru Nanak, developed the Sikh religion as a reaction against the casteism of Hinduism and the gender discrimination of Islam, preaching worship of one God, equality of all races and equality of men and women.

Police in Mesa, Arizona arrested Frank Roque, 42, on charges of first degree murder in the death of Sodhi, and also in connection with attacks on a Lebanese-American clerk at another gas station and gunfire at the home of a family of Afghani descent lives.

Sodhi moved to the United States from India 10 years ago, working as a taxi driver in San Francisco before joining his brother in Phoenix. He opened the gas station more than a year ago.

Jaswant Singh, 79-year-old father of Sodhi, said his son had spent two months with him in India in 1992.

"He got so busy that he didn't visit India again," Singh said over telephone from Bassiwal, a village 160 km southeast of Amritsar.

Gill recalled that the Sikhs had faced similar attacks in the United States after the supporters of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, had attacked the US embassy in Tehran.

"People need to be educated. There are fanatics all over," said Avinash Singh, a management teacher, in New Delhi.

"In 1983, in Los Angeles, I got mistaken as an Ayatollah Khomeini follower ... The filling gas station guy wouldn't give me fuel," he recalled.

Karanbir Singh, a banker, said the Sikh community in America is in a fix. "Those with turbans might get mixed up with the Afghans. Those who shave could get mistaken for the Arabs with similar features and color of skin," he said.

Nearly 1.3 million Sikhs live outside India, mostly in the United States, Canada and Britain, according to government statistics.