Indian Techie From Telangana Shot Dead In US While Returning After Dropping Friend At Airport
In a shocking incident, an Indian-origin man has shot dead in the US state of Maryland.
Sai Charan Nakka, a native of Nalgonda district of Telangana, was found injured with an apparent gunshot wound inside a silver Hyundai Tucson SUV on Sunday evening local time.
He was shifted to the University of Maryland R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center where he died during treatment.
Hate crime or theft attempt?
It was only during treatment that doctors discovered that Charan had a gunshot wound to the head. He died less than two hours later, a statement by MDTA said.
Baltimore police have launched a homicide investigation following Nakka's death.
According to the family, the 25-year-old software engineer was working with a company in Baltimore city of Maryland for the last two years.
He was returning home after dropping off a friend at the airport.
The circumstances that led to the killing of Nakka are still unclear, but some reports claim that was shot dead by a black man when he was traveling in his car.
This is not the first time Indians, including students and working professionals, have been killed in hate crimes or robbery attempts.
Killing of Srinivas Kuchibhotla
In 2017, February 2017 Srinivas Kuchibhotla, a techie from Hyderabad was shot dead and another Indian-origin man was injured after a US national opened fire at them in a bar in Kansas.
The accused, Adam Purinton, a US Navy Veteran had mistaken them for Iranians and got into an argument with them over their status in the US.
He reportedly called them terrorists and told them "get out of my country," after which he was thrown out of the bar.
Purinton who left the bar returned with a semi-automatic gun and shot at Kuchibhotla and two more people who were with him.
In August 2018, Purinton was awarded three consecutive life sentences on federal hate crime charges for killing Kuchibhotla.
Hate crimes against Sikhs in the US
Several others, mostly Sikhs have also faced racially motivated attacks in the US, by people who mistake them for Muslims.?
In March this year, Union minister of state for external affairs V Muraleedharan had told the Lok Sabha that Sikhs have been subjected to 198 hate motivated crimes of varied nature in the United States between 2018 and 2020 as per the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) records.
As per the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) programme’s annual hate crime statistics report released by the FBI, US department of justice regarding anti-Sikh hate crime incidents, there were 1,419 hate crimes motivated by bias based on religion in 2018 and 60 such incidents were reported against Sikhs.
Similarly, 1,512 hate crimes were reported in the US in 2019 and 49 were against Sikhs.
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