FBI to investigate shooting of Indian techie as a hate crime

THE WHITE HOUSE, WHICH HAD BEEN SLOW TO CONDEMN THE KILLING, FOLLOWED UP WITH A SPOKESPERSON CALLING IT A ‘RACIALLY MOTIVATED KILLING’

WASHINGTON: The FBI said on Tuesday it was investigating the killing of Srinivas Kuchibhotla, an Indian aviation engineer, in Kansas last week as a hate crime, which gave the federal agency a lead role in the case and meant the threat extended to the larger community.

“Based upon the initial investigative activity, the FBI, in conjunction with the US attorney’s office and the Department of Justice civil rights division, is investigating this incident as a hate crime,” an FBI spokeswoman said in a statement.

“The FBI will continue to work jointly with Olathe Police Department and our state and local partners regarding this ongoing investigation.”

The White House, which had been slow to condemn the killing, had followed up shortly, with a spokeswoman calling it a “racially motived killing”.

President Donald Trump issued a comprehensive condemnation in his first speech to US congress later in the day.

Adam Purinton, a US navy veteran has been charged with fatally shooting Kuchibhotla on February 22 at a bar in Olathe, Kansas, and wounding a friend, Alok Madasani, and Ian Grillot, a patron, who had tried to intervene.

Purinton had thought the Indians were from Iran, one of the seven Muslim-majority countries in Trump’s controversial travel ban that has been put on hold by court and which might be replaced by a new order any day now.

The shooter was heard telling Kuchibhotla and Madasani to “get out of my country”.

The two men hailing from Andhra Pradesh worked at Garmin, a GPS technology major, and had been to that bar several times before, and were well known to others.

This was not the first time Indians were targeted mistaken for Middle-Easterners.

Balbir Singh Sandhu, a Sikh, became a the first victim of the backlash against the September 9, 2001, terror attacks when he was shot dead just four days after by a man in Messa, Arizona, who thought he was from the MiddleEast because of his turban.

The FBI has been treating such attacks against Sikhs — the worst was in 2013 when a white supremacist killed six men and women at a gurudwara in Wisconsin — and Hindus as hatecrimes, as threats to the larger community. And it works with advocacy groups such as the Sikh Coalition and the Hindu American Foundation to address the problem.