Melbourne, June 09: A 23-year-old Indian student was beaten up for the second time in a fortnight by a group of youths in Melbourne, the 11th person from the community to be assaulted within a space of a month in Australia.Kamal Jit was found unconscious and bleeding by another Indian student in western suburb of the city on Sunday.
It was the second attack in two weeks on Jit, who was previously pelted with eggs by several masked men after getting off a late night train at St Albans station in western suburb.
“It is very bad because we pay a lot of money and we are living far away from our country and from our families and we are without protection,” Jit was quoted as saying in ‘The Age’ newspaper on Monday.
As he walked home at about 1:40 am on Sunday, Jit said, he noticed three men acting suspiciously in a car and he tried to avoid them.
He then saw two men come out of it near a pizza shop, while another waited in a car.
“The two guys pushed me to the ground and I was hit on the head, I think with a steel rod,” Jit said.
Jit, who required seven stitches after the blow to his head, said he did not want to live in the suburb any longer.
Jit’s friends said the attack was the sixth or seventh over the past week on the Indian students, and called for extra police at the suburb of St Albans station at night.
A Victoria police spokeswoman was quoted by the newspaper as saying that extra police, increased surveillance and mobile patrols had been deployed around train stations.
The Australian government had last week announced setting up of a task force headed by the National Security Adviser to deal with such violence.
Hundreds of Indian students on Sunday rallied in Sydney to protest against the attacks.
Apart from Indians, there were students from other countries at the rally, who voiced their concerns about the racial violence and demanded police to be alert to prevent such incidents from happening again.
Just ahead of the rally, another youth from the community complained about his newly-bought car being torched outside his home here.
–PTI–