By Parveen Chopra, IANS
New York : Two more robberies around the Duke University campus in North Carolina seem to support the robbery angle in the shooting death of an Indian doctoral student there Friday.
The body of Abhijeet Mahato, 29, studying at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering, Durham, was found in a pool of blood at his apartment.
Now, in separate incidents a Duke university student and an employee have said they were robbed by a man displaying a gun near off-campus apartments Sunday night.
The same robber in both cases is described as a black man, 5-feet 8 inches tall, according to a news item on Duke’s website.
Mahato’s killing “appears to be a case of robbery”, Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs at Duke, told IANS after ruling out personal enmity and hate crime angles.
Significantly, Mahato’s family in Jharkhand told media persons that he mentioned falling victim to robbery at gunpoint a few times.
Security on and off campus at Duke is being intensified now.
Aaron Graves, associate vice president for campus safety and security at Duke, said, “The Duke police department is extremely concerned about the type and frequencies of crimes that the Duke community has experienced recently and we will intensify our efforts to keep our students, faculty, staff, patients and guests safe.”
“We will deploy existing resources to the best of our ability and additional resources where necessary to accomplish this critical objective,” he added.
Meanwhile, Mahato’s body is likely to be released after the autopsy, following which arrangements can be made to take it to India.
The Indian embassy in Washington is sending two officers, Sanjay Sinha and Alok Pandey, to render assistance. They will also meet the university president and the police investigating Mahato’s murder.
Mahato was born in Jamshedpur and raised in Kolkata. He did his Bachelor in Engineering (BE) from Jadavpur University and M. Tech. from IIT Kanpur.
The North Carolina incident comes less than two months after two Indian scholars were shot dead in another US campus. Chandrasekhar Reddy Komma and Kiran Kumar Allam were killed in the Louisiana State University (LSU), Baton Rouge. In that case too, the police have yet to find a motive or arrest any suspects.