INDIAN ATTACKED IN MELBOURNE
July 29th, 2010 by | Posted in News Comments Off on INDIAN ATTACKED IN MELBOURNE
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Melbourne: An Indian student, who was hospitalised with multiple jaw fractures after being brutally beaten up by a group of six youths here, will not be able to eat for up to five weeks and also cannot talk properly, according to one of his friends.
Bharat Thapar, 24, who was assaulted on Monday night in South Oakleigh, is recuperating in a hospital with plates in his jaws and “bruises all over his body”.
Quoting Thapar’s friend Sumeet Khanna, ‘The Age’ reported today that the victim was unable to talk properly after a brutal confrontation with six youths that left him with four fractures in his lower jaw.
Khanna had earlier said that two of his friends, including Thapar, had been driving through the Oakleigh area when they saw another Indian man being abused by a group of youths.
Victoria Police spokesman, has now revealed that the initial incident appeared to have been sparked when somebody parked a car in front of a mechanic’s workshop and refused to move it. A group of men then physically moved the car and a scuffle is believed to have developed, he said. Thapar arrived with his friend in a car and the confrontation escalated.
In a first of it’s kind, three men were arrested for racial assault on a Indian student who was assaulted in a bus by a group of three youths who repeatedly hit him and also threw chicken pieces at him, in another attack on the youths from the community in Melbourne, Australia.
Three ‘drunk’ youngsters repeatedly hit 24-year-old Rajan Kumar Katkam and also threw chicken pieces at him in a packed bus in the afternoon.
“I was travelling on a bus to Rye from Frankston at 2:30 pm (local time) when three youths who were apparently drunk started harassing me,” Rajan said.
Rajan Kumar Katkam, 24, who arrived in 2008 to pursue his course in Graphics, has filed a case with the office of Victims of Crime following the the incident.
It is believed that video footage of the incident has been received by the Victoria police.
Two of the three men arrested for attacking him were on Wednesday charged with inciting racial hatred and will face the Frankston Magistrates Court on September 1 on racial villification charges.
The three suspects were arrested after Katkam was assaulted in a moving bus travelling towards Portsea on February 6.
Meanwhile, President of Federation of Indian Association of Victoria (FIAV), Vasan Srinivasan, who is closely following Rajan’s case, said the victim was not able to move his right hand and had been feeling weak.
Tags: Bharat Thapar, Indian attacked, Racial attack, Rajan Kumar Katkam, Vasan Srinivasan
