Hyderabad engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla was shot dead at a bar in Kansas, US (PTI photo)
After an
Indian engineer was shot dead last week at a bar in Kansas by a man who allegedly yelled "get out of my country", Home Minister Rajnath Singh said today, "We hope the US government will try to restore the faith of ethnic minorities in the country."
Speaking to reporters in Varanasi, Mr Singh also said the US government had taken cognisance of the crime.
Srinivas Kuchibhotla, a 32-year-old engineer from Hyderabad, was with his friend at a bar in Olathe on Wednesday when the shooter, navy veteran Adam Purinton, aimed at him. Adam Purinton, 51, started shouting at them before firing multiple rounds.
Mr Kuchibhotla, who worked with an American multinational after graduating from the University of Texas, was killed instantly. His friend Alok Madasani and a witness who tried to stop the shooter,
Ian Grillot, were injured. The shooter ran away but was caught in Missouri over five hours later, where he told a staffer at a local bar that he had shot two Middle-Eastern men.
Reports have suggested since then that there is a growing view among Indians that the US after Donald Trump is
no longer safe for foreign students.
On Friday, after the Kansas shooting, Alok Madasani's father appealed from Hyderabad to "all parents in India" not to send their children to the United States under "present circumstances."
President Trump's temporary ban on immigrants from seven countries led to nervousness in several countries just days after the new administration took charge. The ban was stayed and a federal appeals court has refused to restore it. Indians say they are uneasy about possible restrictions on student permissions as well as H-1B visas, the foreign visas for highly skilled workers.
The engineers in the Kansas shooting - Mr Kuchibhotla and Mr Madasani - were admitted to work on H-1B visas after they completed their graduate studies in the US.