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Petrol bomb hurled at Indian in Sydney

India steps up pressure; Australia arrests five youths for recent incidents of assault

— Photos: AFP

Indian High Commissioner to Australia Sujatha Singh addresses the media in the city, after a meeting with the police. She said there would be increased patrols around trouble spots.

Melbourne: As India piled up pressure, Australia on Friday arrested five youths in connection with the recent assaults on Indian students and charged one of them with attempted murder, amid a fresh incident of petrol bomb attack that left a youth from the community badly burnt.

A 17-year-old boy was charged with attempted murder after four Indian students, including 25-year-old Shravan Kumar, were attacked by gatecrashers at a party here over the weekend, the Victorian police said. Another 18-year-old was quizzed for the assault, but has since been released.

Kumar, who was stabbed with a screwdriver at the birthday party, remained critical and was still on life support.

The police charged four minors in another case involving the brutal bashing of a 21-year-old Sourabh Sharma on a train on May 9.

As per the rules, the arrested boys have not been identified. They have been charged with offences including affray, intentionally causing injury, recklessly causing injury and robbery, the police said in a statement.

Jayasanka Bagpelli speaks on the phone as he maintains vigil outside the Royal Melbourne Hospital, where fellow student Shravan Kumar is fighting for his life after he was stabbed in Melbourne.

“Racism a factor”

The arrests came after Indian High Commissioner Sujatha Singh said the spate of assaults targeting Indian students had to “stop now” and asserted that racism was a factor in some of the incidents.

In the fresh incident, Rajesh Kumar, 25, suffered 30 per cent burns when a petrol bomb was hurled at him in his home in Sydney.

Ms. Sujatha Singh’s remarks came as Kumar, who hails from Andhra Pradesh, was fighting for his life in a hospital here after having been stabbed with a screwdriver by a group of teens in the weekend attack that left three of his friends also injured.

Another student Baljinder Singh, stabbed by two attackers early this week, has been discharged. He was attacked near the Carnegie train station by two armed men, who also demanded money from him.

A top police official here, however, denied that the attacks were racially motivated.

There was a perception that Indians were a “weak prey” to criminals, Deputy Commissioner Kieran Walshe was quoted as saying by media here.

“I don’t think they are [racist crimes] in general ... more opportunistic activity. We think they [Indians] are vulnerable, we don’t think it’s racial, we think they are a weak target.”

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said he was horrified at the attacks but defended the police response. “Any act of violence, any decent human being just responds with horror at the sorts of attack which have occurred recently ... but the key thing is to make sure our law enforcement authorities are doing the best they can. I am confident they are,” he was quoted as saying by the AFP.

But Opposition leader Ted Baillieu blamed the Victorian government for neglecting the issue for long. “We’ve been raising these concerns for nearly three years and the problems got worse, not better. Scores of students have been attacked,” he said.

Reacting to the statement, a spokesman for Minister for Skills and Workforce Participation, which looks after international students, said Mr. Baillieu was “choosing to make political capital out of something he has not sought to research or understand.” — PTI

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