Indians held for murder; MEA says be careful of Oz

As the Ministry of External Affairs today reiterated an advisory cautioning Indian students about studying in Australia in the wake of racist attacks on Indians, Australian authorities said Indians were found to be involved in two of three fatal attacks.

Gurpreet Singh (23) and his wife Harpreet Bhullar (20) were among three persons arrested in connection with the murder of Ranjodh Singh, a 25-year old Indian whose burnt body was found in the New South Wales town of Griffith on December 29. A third man was also arrested and will be charged with Singh’s murder. Australian authorities said initial reports suggested that the motive for this was an internal labour dispute.

In another case involving the death of an Indian, Chamanjot Singh has been charged with killing his wife Manpreet Kaur at their home in Sydney on December 29. Singh was arrested by Victorian police as he got off a bus in Melbourne.

Peter Varghese, Australian High Commissioner to India, while interacting with staffers of The Indian Express at the Idea Exchange programme today, said: “The arrests underlined the importance of allowing investigations to run their course and not jump to conclusions based on initial reports. The identity of those arrested as well as the conclusions reached by the investigation clearly show that racism has not been a factor.”

Varghese said this was “widely reported in the Indian media as a racist attack”. “Once an image takes place in a media-rich environment, it is difficult to get rid of that image,” he said.