Mother of slain Indian man told him to leave US if in danger
Mother of slain Indian man told him to leave US if in danger
HYDERABAD, India — The mother of an Indian engineer who was killed in an apparently racially motivated shooting in an American bar said she asked her son to come back to India if he felt threatened in the United States, but he said he was not in any danger.
Hundreds of grieving relatives and friends tearfully mourned the 32-year-old who came to the U.S. in 2005 to pursue a master’s degree at the University of Texas at El Paso.
A statement issued Tuesday by the Indian External Affairs Ministry said American authorities “are engaged with us on the larger concern regarding safety of Indians in the U.S., a matter which continues to receive the government’s top priority.”
Hours later, the flower-laden body was taken in an open carriage from his home to a crematorium in the Jubilee Hills area, where it was placed on a wooden pyre and lit as part of Hindu last rites.
According to witnesses, the gunman yelled “get out of my country” at Kuchibhotla and a colleague named Alok Madasani before opening fire at Austins Bar and Grill in Olathe, Kan., a suburb of Kansas City, on Feb. 22.
India’s information and broadcasting minister, M. Venkaiah Naidu, who visited the bereaved family over the weekend, condemned the attack.