String of attacks on Indian students in US continues, yet another found dead

New York: In a series of disturbing incidents, an Indian doctoral candidate was found dead at Purdue University in Indiana while another Indian IT student was brutally attacked near his house in Chicago.

The back-to-back incidents since Sunday were the sixth in the US in 2024 alone.

According to The Purdue Exponent, a news agency independent of the university, Sameer Kamath, 23, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering, was found dead in Warren County on Monday, the mechanical engineering head Eckhard Groll announced on Tuesday.

Kamath's body was found at a nature preserve at Crow's Grove, the agency said, quoting a press release from Justin Brummett, the Warren County Coroner.

After his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Kamath had come to Purdue in the summer of 2021, Groll said in his email.

He was slated to graduate from the doctoral programme in 2025. In another incident, Indian IT student Syed Mazahir Ali was chased and attacked by unidentified men near his house in the US city of Chicago on Sunday, February 4.

There were videos on social media and in one video posted on X, Ali can be seen with a bloodied nose and face and blood stains on his clothes.

Ali, who moved to the US from Hyderabad about, told ABC7 Eyewitness News that one of the attackers pointed a gun at him. Ali is pursuing Masters in information technology from Indiana Wesleyan University.

Last week, 19-year-old Shreyas Reddy Beniger, a student at the Lindner School of Business in Ohio State was found dead.

Another Indian student, Neel Acharya, was confirmed dead days after being reported missing on January 28. (PTI)