Spate of killings binds Indian students in US

NEW YORK: Eight Indian students have been killed in US universities since April last year. The off-campus gun attack last Friday on Indian MBA student Pulluri Shashank opens old wounds and raises questions about safety.

Shashank, 22, enrolled in the Graduate Business Studies programme in the Middle Tennessee State University, was shot in the parking lot of his apartment complex in Murfeesboro city, home to the largest undergraduate university in Tennessee.

“We have no suspects as Mr Shashank was shot in the back and did not see his attackers who fled the parking lot. We have not established any motive,” officer Kyle Evans of the Murfeesboro Police Department, told DNA on Monday.

The Murfreesboro incident report obtained by DNA shows that Shashank was approached in the parking lot by several black men who fled when he was shot from behind. He is still recovering from gunshot wounds in the Vanderbilt Hospital. It is unclear whether Shashank’s neighbour who alerted the police will be able to provide details of the shooting to help detectives hunt down the gunmen.

The rise in shootings and US campus murders has put Indian students, who have worked hard to reach US universities, in the crosshairs. But Indian embassy officials say the community is not being targeted. “We are in touch with the local police and the authorities at the federal level. Mr Shashank’s condition is improving,” Rahul Chhabra, spokesman for the Indian embassy in Washington, told DNA.

Cho Seung-Hui, 23, killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg last year in the deadliest shooting in modern US history. Mumbai’s own, Minal Hiralal Panchal (26), who was studying architecture, died in the shooting along with another Indian student and Indian professor GV Loganathan.

Indian students have stuck even closer together because of the shootings and their associations have seen their numbers swell. “After the Virginia Tech shooting the university set up an emergency telephone line for students to report suspicious stuff. We will get a warning on our cell phones if guns go off on campus,” said Maharashtra’s Ajay Kapare, who is the president of the 450-member India Students Association at Texas Tech University.

Kapare, an MBA student, says; “These incidents shouldn’t scare off Indian students from coming to the US. Indians are not being targeted. I feel safe in my apartment complex, which has 150 Indian students. We live a mile from the campus and are tight-knit. We help new Indian students find suitable housing.”

After last December’s shock murder of two Indian PhD students in a home invasion at an apartment on the campus of Louisiana State University (LSU), Indian students piled pressure on the authorities to beef up campus security and get the killers of Chandrasekhar Reddy Komma, 31, and Kiran Kumar Allam, 33.

Ravi Tej Kavalipati, president of the Indian Student Association of LSU, said they were pressing for safer family housing for foreign students. “I won’t say Indians are targeted.

But it is a question of higher vulnerability when living in family apartments for international students that are not gated. These apartments aren’t as secure as campus residential halls,” said Kavalipati.

The US long ago surpassed England as the student destination for higher education; over 250,000 Indian students are currently studying in the US, four times the number in Britain. For the sixth year in a row, India sent the most students to the US in 2006-2007 with a 10% increase to 83,833.
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