Hindustan Times (Chandigarh)

Indians avoid places prone to hate crimes

- Harry Stevens

NEWDELHI: The American state of Kansas — where 32-year-old Wednesday — is not particular­ly prone to hate crimes, nor is it home to a disproport­ionate amount of Indians. And Kansas is not an outlier. In general, Indians in the United States tend not to live in states where they are most vulnerable to hate crimes.

In North Dakota, which had the highest rate of crimes motivated by the victim’s race or religion in 2015, according to data from the US Federal Bureau of Investigat­ion (FBI), Indians are just .28% of the population. And in Montana, which ranked fourth-highest in race- and religion-based hate crimes in 2015, Indians account for .05% of the population, the lowest of all US states.

Kansas, for its part, reported 54 hate crimes motivated by race or religion in 2015, ranking 15th in such crimes per population. Its population is made up of about about .52% Indians.

Some states, on the other hand, have both a relatively large proportion of Indians and a high hate crime rate. New Jersey, which has by far the highest proportion of Indians — 3.80% — also ranks sixth in its rate of race- and religion-based hate crimes.

Kuchibotla, who was from Hyderabad and came to the US as a Master’s student at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, may be America’s first victim of a race-based hate crime since the election of Donald Trump, who won the presidency in part by tapping in to the racial anxieties of white Americans. Yet the country is no stranger to hate crimes motivated by race and religion.

In 2015, the most recent year for which data are available, the US saw 4,586 such crimes, a slight increase from 2014. NEW DELHI: It was supposed to be just another evening for Ian Grillot who had walked into his favourite bar to unwind and catch the local basketball game.

Instead, the 24-year-old is now firmly in the spotlight after getting wounded while trying to save two Indians from gunfire.

As shots rang through the suburban Kansas City bar on Thursday, Grillot ducked behind a table and when he thought the gunman was out of bullets, he lunged at the man. But as the Kansas City Star reported, the man had still one round left and shot Grillot.

“I guess I miscounted,” Grillot said in a video, as reported by the newspaper.

Grillot said in the video that he wasn’t really thinking when he tried to save the two Indians.

“It was just, it wasn’t right, and I didn’t want the gentleman to potentiall­y go after somebody else,” the Kansas City Star quoted him as saying.

But despite the harrowing circumstan­ces, Grillot told the newspaper he was thrilled to see Madasani standing in his doorway at the hospital.

“It just put the biggest smile on my face,” Grillot said in the video. “I’m just very grateful that one of the gentlemen is fine and alive. It’s terrible what happened to his friend. But I think he was watching over us last night.”

He said he considered the Indian his new “best friend”. A GoFundMe page created for him raised more than $87,000.

“I was just doing what anyone should have done,” Grillot told the newspaper. “It’s not about where he’s from, or ethnicity. We’re all humans.”

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