Kuchibhotla’s widow to attend Trump’s address

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump began his maiden State of the Union address, around this time in 2017, condemning the killing of Srinivas Kuchibhotla in Kansas by a man who had yelled at the Indian IT engineer to go back to his country.

This year, Kuchibhotla’s widow, Sunayana Dumala, will be in the visitors’ gallery of the House of Representatives watching President Trump as he delivers his second State of the Union speech later this month.

Dumala will be a guest of Representative Kevin Yoder, her area Congressman and a Republican, whose office confirmed the invitation and her acceptance on Wednesday, but has not responded yet to a request for comments about his reasons for inviting her.

“The shooter’s bullet destroyed her husband and broke her so deeply that we had to ... show him that he didn’t break our community,” the congressman said to Kansas City Star, a local news publication. “We had to let the world know that Kansas City, Kansas and America are welcome to immigrants.”

Yoder, who is a member of the House India Caucus, has emerged as a leading advocate of Indian techies on H-1B struggling to navigate Trump administration’s war on legal and illegal immigration.

He was the only Republican to oppose, for instance, the administration’s now-junked proposal to end H-1B visa extensions, a draconian measure that could have led to mass deportation of Indians.

Dumala spoke to the Star for an article about a year since the tragedy, but did not talk about her upcoming visit to the US Congress.

She had not responded to an emailed request for comments at the time of writing this report.

Kuchibhotla, an avionics engineer with GPS major Garmin, was fatally shot by Adam Purinton, a US navy veteran, at a bar in Olathe, Kansas, on February 22, 2017 in an incident that sent shockwaves across the United States, India and beyond.

The assailant, who had told Kuchibhotla and his friend Alok Madasani at the time of the attack to “go back your country”, had also shot Ian Grillot, a white male who tried to intervene, wounding him grievously.