Drama play by young Sikhs

Gurdwara attack and a singh stabbed

Sikh Gurdwara vandalized, student stabbed in Oz

Melbourne, Australia: Racial assaults continue unchecked in Australia. On Monday, a Sikh gurdwara was vandalized in Shepparton, a small town 90km north of Melbourne.

Racist graffiti and swastikas were scribbled on its walls, eggs thrown at it and the fencing around the gurdwara smashed by a car. On Tuesday, another Indian student was stabbed in the chest by a box-cutter knife on his way to college in east Melbourne.

Meanwhile, Australia set up an inquiry committee to look into the attacks even as Union minister for overseas Indian affairs Vayalar Ravi said his ministry would prepare and maintain a register of all Indians studying abroad and streamline campus placements to foreign universities.

Nardeep Singh, a 20-year-old from Ludhiana, was assaulted in a car park. The five attackers initially asked for cigarettes. When the student replied he was a non-smoker, they asked for money. On refusal, one of them stabbed him in the chest. Nardeep is a student of nursing at the Chisholm Technical Institute.

Singh, who had arrived in Australia only a month ago, fled to the police station where his statement was recorded. He is under observation in a Melbourne hospital.

Got to be strapped out here (its kuljug)

Family fears son too must have been a victim in Australia

Maninderpal Singh’s parents with his photograph. Maninderpal died under mysterious circumstances in Australia last year.

Kurali, Punjab: Balwant Singh, an officer posted with Markfed, curses the day he allowed his son Maninderpal Singh, alias Sunny, to board a flight to Melbourne, Australia. Two years hence, after Sunny was found dead under mysterious circumstances on railway tracks in Lloyd Street, Kensington, on May 29, 2008, Balwant Singh feels that his son was also a victim of racist attack.

“Till date we don’t know how our child died. We are not even aware if the body cremated at Melbourne was of our child,” said Balwant.

A promising youth, Sunny left for Australia in January 2007 for pursuing diploma in hospitality management at College of Holmes, Melbourne. “Sunny followed his friends abroad and wanted to do big in life. He was a sincere boy and a noble soul,” reminisces his father.

He remained in touch with his family till the first week of May, 2008. He called up his mother and told her that he was going away for vacations and would call on his own. For three months there was no word from Sunny and his parents assumed that he was holidaying with his friends.

On September 18, 2008, the Kurali police got a message from the Interpol that Sunny was found dead on the railway tracks on May 29, 2008, and the same message was passed on to his parents.

As per the letter issued by the Melbourne police, Sunny had died in a train accident on May 29, 2008, at 9.23 pm. But the family was informed three months after the incident.

His father alleged that neither the Melbourne police nor Indian authorities helped the family in tracing actual belongings of Sunny. He said the wave of racist attacks against Indian students had just started at that point of time and his son might be amongst its early victims.