Killing of Indian student in US not due to gang violence: Police

Less than a month and murder of three foreigner students in United States have shocked the entire Indian community there. In a fresh incident, Abhijit Mahato, a 29-year-old IIT alumnus, who was studying for an engineering doctorate degree at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering in Durham, was found shot dead in an apartment complex in North Carolina on Friday night.

Senior Indian embassy’s officials have reached at the engineering school to meet with the authorities there and are in the process of sending the deceased body backs to home.

Meanwhile, police have ruled out any possibility of the killing of the Indian student as a result of “gang violence.” A police official said though we were not sure and the investigation was still in the process, but the initial investigation indicates that the student found dead was not the victim of gang violence.

According to media reports detectives and crime-scene technicians spent the early morning hours of Saturday examining the spot and found "some clues.”

The crime is not believed to be related to “gang violence” said Jose Lopez, the police chief of Durham after asking the cause, which led to incident.

On early Saturday officials at Duke by sending out all-campus e-mail informed students, staff and faculty that a graduate student had been shot dead.

Federal law clearly defines universities to issue timely warnings of any incident that might pose an ongoing threat to students or employees.

Sources said that after completing the autopsy, which is hopefully to be on Monday, the dead body would be released following which arrangements could be made to take it to India.

The second year student was a graduate of Jadavpur University and IIT Kanpur in 2004 and was working in the Duke Computational Mechanics Lab. He is originally a native of Tatanagar, Jharkhand.

Earlier within a month the two Indian PhD students from Andhra Pradesh were found shot dead in Louisiana State University campus. Police are still investigating that murder.

The murder third in a row within a month has certainly raised question about the American Universities how safe it is for the Indian students.