A Boston University (B.U.) student who was denied access to the dance club at the Hong Kong restaurant last week for wearing a religious head covering is attempting to make the Kong reverse what he calls its discriminatory no-hats policy.

Deeptej Singh, a first-year medical student at B.U. who is a Sikh, said that when he tried to enter the club on the night of May 14, the Kong’s general manager David T. Hayes denied him entrance, citing a Cambridge-wide no-hats policy.

However, Cambridge Police Department (CPD) spokesperson Frank T. Pasquarello said he was not aware of the policy.

“We have no idea,” Pasquarello said. “We’ve never heard of it; I don’t think there is such a policy.”

Singh, 22, said he believes he was a victim of discrimination, and he is calling upon the New York-based Sikh Coalition to help him make the Kong change their policy.

“We did not discriminate against anyone,” Hayes said. “We blanket it on everyone, whether it’s a turban, or a do-rag, or a baseball cap, or a birthday hat.”

Hayes said that CPD provides detail officers for the Kong’s bar and dance club on Friday and Saturday nights and the club instituted the policy as a favor to the CPD after an individual took a knife out of a do-rag and cut an officer’s face.

“We want to make sure they feel safe here,” Hayes said. ‘It’s easier for us to abolish everything than to make an exception.”

Singh said he had been on the third floor earlier in the evening, and it was only when he was returning to the third floor with a group of friends around 11 p.m. on May 14 that Hayes stopped him in the staircase and told him he could not enter because he was wearing a hat.

“I tried to tell him I’m a Sikh, and it’s part of my religion,” Singh said. “As soon as I said this, he said ‘This is not discrimination, this is a blanket policy.’”

Singh said that Sikhs do not cut their hair and wear a turban because it symbolizes their commitment to Sikhism.

“It is one of the five religious symbols that all Sikhs should have,” he said.

When Singh tried to explain that he wore his turban for religious reasons, he said Hayes responded that the Kong, as a private establishment, makes no exception to the rule.

“If he needs to wear his turban, he can go to the bar,” Hayes said in an interview yesterday. “He just can’t go upstairs.”

Hayes added that the Hong Kong is a private establishment and said the establishment’s guests must abide by their rules. “I’m running a business,” Hayes said. “If I had prejudices it wouldn’t be cost-effective.”