LD AUSTRALIA 2

Meanwhile, rising football star Michael Hurley, who
allegedly attacked an Indian cabbie in September last year,
has been granted an adjournment for a court hearing.

Hurley, 19, who did not appear at Melbourne court on
Wednesday, faces five charges of recklessly causing injury,
unlawful assault, assault by kicking, failing to pay for a
taxi and public drunkenness.
Nearly 100 cases of attacks on Indians, mostly students,
were reported in Australia in 2009 as against 17 incidents of
assaults in 2008.
Nitin Garg, a 21-year-old accounting graduate who was
stabbed to death by unidentified assailants here, became the
first victim of such assaults this year.
Reacting to the attacks, Victoria's top cop, Chief
Commissioner Simon Overland, said there is a racist element to
some of these assaults on Indians.
"There is no question, regardless of the motives,
Indian students have to a degree been targeted in robberies
and that is not okay," he was quoted as saying by the media.
"We recognised this problem a long time before it hit
the public."
"We have known for two years that there has been this
issue and we have been working away, at a number of levels
around engaging with students, trying to make them understand
the risks and how they keep themselves safe."
Overland said some of the attacks were racist. "I have
said from day one undoubtedly some of these attacks have a
racist motive or there is racist elements to these attacks,"
he said. (More) PTI NC
AHM


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