By Arun Kumar, IANS
Washington : There was no lead yet in the probe into the murder of two Indian students at the Louisiana State University campus as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) joined the police in the search for three suspects.
The two doctoral students Chandrasekhar Reddy Komma, 31, of Hyderabad, and Kiran Kumar Allam, 33, of Kurnool, were found shot dead at LSU apartments at Baton Rouge Thursday night.
S.M. Gavai, Indian consul general in Houston, told IANS Saturday, “There is no lead yet on the shocking murder of the two students. I have spoken to the LSU chancellor (Sean O’Keefe) and been told that FBI is also involved in the investigations besides the police of the university and the state.”
“My deputy, K.P. Pillai, is already there and has met the university authorities and spouses of the two students. It is a terrible tragedy. But now our job is to render all assistance so that things move and the murderers are apprehended,” Gavai said.
The families of the two students have requested the bodies to be flown to India. But autopsy and embalming can take a few days, he said.
Besides Pillai, Alok Pandey, first secretary at the Indian embassy in Washington, has also reached Baton Rouge to establish contact with the university authorities, Police Department and the Indian-American community.
No arrests had been made, and no suspects named by Saturday morning. But a task force of several law enforcement agencies was trying “to identify and locate three young black men who were seen hurriedly leaving the vicinity”, Baton Rouge Police Department spokesman Sergeant Don Kelly said in a news release.
The men got into a small to midsize four-door car, possibly occupied by a fourth person acting as the driver, Kelly said. The car was seen leaving the complex with its headlights off, headed south on Governor Claiborne Drive, he said, and the lights were turned back on as it turned west onto Aster Street.
With a contingent of 332, Indians form the largest group of international students from a single country at LSU, which has a total of 1,468 international students enrolled for the 2007 fall semester.
Komma and Allam were slain at the Edward Gay Apartments, near West Roosevelt Street, home to 288 residents, 94 percent of whom are international students.
Both were shot in the head, LSU Chancellor Sean O’Keefe said at a news conference Friday. They “appeared to be targeted for reasons unknown”, O’ Keefe said. “This does not appear to be a random event.”
But Captain Russell Roge of the LSU Police Department said Friday afternoon during a meeting with Edward Gay Apartments residents: “This is an armed robbery, we know that for sure. There are items missing.”
He said the robbery was “possibly a target of opportunity” and detectives have heard that Allam often left the door to his apartment open. There were no signs of forced entry, Roge said.
Regardless of whether the killings were random, they left many students on campus uneasy Friday, the day before the end of the semester.
“You would think university housing would be safer than living off campus, said Tolulope Ogunbakir, a graduate student who lives at Edward Gay Apartments. “You can’t say much about that now.”
During the Friday news conference, O’Keefe said serious consideration was given to putting the entire campus on lockdown after the shootings. But that was not done because “there was nothing to suggest there was a pattern here,” he said.
LSU students are in final exams, which end Saturday. No tests have been cancelled because of the killings.
LSU has increased its security on campus, “with law enforcement officials being more visible than usual at the Edward Gay Apartments and other housing units on the northwest portion of the campus”, the university said in a news release.