Indian student attacked in Russia

MOSCOW: In yet another case of apparent racial attack, an Indian medical student was badly beaten up by unknown youths near his hostel in St. Petersburg in Russia.

The Indian student of Mechnikov Medical Academy, who has requested to withhold his identity so as not to create anxiety for his parents back home, was attacked by a group of youth on Sunday night 70 metres away from his hostel, according to Indian embassy sources.

A senior official of the Indian Consulate General in St. Petersburg visited the boy within half an hour of the attack.

According to an Interfax report, the Indian student's leg was broken and his face and other parts of body were covered with bruises.

The attack comes three months after a sixth year Indian student Nitish Kumar of the same medical academy was stabbed to death in September.

Nitish's brutal murder by alleged skinheads had stirred unrest among foreign students in St. Petersburg and Indian Embassy's demarche had forced the Kremlin to focus on the acute problem of xenophobia and racial intolerance in post-communist Russia.

Last week President Vladimir Putin had summoned the meeting with the leaders of the political parties and asked them not to play the racist card in the run-up to next year's general elections.

Putin has urged the parliament to reduce the age of criminal prosecution of youth to 14 years for hate crimes as the racists use teenagers under sixteen to attack non-white foreigners.