By IANS,
Colombo : A Sri Lankan student died after he was assaulted in a Malaysian restaurant by a gang of unidentified attackers, official sources here said Tuesday.
Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry said the victim – Sriskandarajah Saarankan, a Sri Lankan student attached to the Nottingham University in Malaysia – succumbed to injuries Sunday morning at the Subang Jaya Medical Hospital in Malaysia.
The ministry in a statement said Saarankan and his colleagues were dining at a restaurant outside the university premises Thursday evening when “a gang stormed the restaurant with machetes and started attacking the customers in the restaurant”.
“It is understood that their target was a group of middle aged Malaysian men of South Indian origin. The armed gang had mistaken the Sri Lankan students as acquaintances of their target, and launched the brutal attack on them,” the ministry said.
It said that the Sri Lanka High Commission was assisting the victim’s family to secure the release of the body after an autopsy, adding that the mission officials were due to meet with the director of the university “to discuss the security concerns of the Sri Lankan students”.