India seeks ‘strongest’ US action in Kansas shooting
Naidu meets family of slain engineer, assures all assistance
Hyderabad, Feb. 26: India demanded the “strongest action” from the US government Sunday after Hyderabad’s engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla was killed and his colleague from Warangal wounded in an apparent hate crime in Kansas City.
“USA should respond to this incident. American President and people of America should come out openly to condemn such actions... and then take the strongest action,” Union minister M. Venkaiah Naidu said. He and his Cabinet colleague Bandaru Dattatreya met the slain engineer’s family in Hyderabad Sunday.
“Such incidents involving racial discrimination are shameful,” Mr Naidu said. “They will dent the image of USA. So the US President, administration and civil societies should unequivocally respond and condemn such incidents.”
Kuchibhotla’s body will arrive at his home on Monday evening, a state minister in Telangana said.
“It is shocking that Kuchibhotla was shot dead in an alleged (case of) racial discrimination. It caused mental agony to all Indians. I express my sympathies to the bereaved family,” he said.
Alok Madasani who was injured in the shooting has now been released from hospital. His parents were due to leave for the US late Sunday.
His father Jagan Mohan Reddy, a chief engineer with the Telangana government, told AFP they would spend at least a week in the US before “taking stock of what to do (next)”.
American President and people should condemn the shooting… It caused mental agony to all Indians… such incidents will dent USA’s image — Venkaiah
Naidu, Union minister
“They lost a dear friend (Kuchibhotla) in the attack but somehow, by God’s grace, my son survived,” Mr Reddy said.
According to reports, the shooter who has been arrested, yelled “get out of my country” before opening fire on 32-year-old Kuchibhotla and his Indian colleague Wednesday night. An American who tried to intervene also received injuries in the firing in Austins Bar and Grill in Olathe in Kansas City in the US state of Missouri.
Washington, Feb. 26: India’s envoy to the US Navtej Sarna has met Donald Trump at the Oval Office of the White House here for the first time since the Republican leader’s inauguration as the US President.
Mr Trump met all the new foreign ambassadors, including Sarna, on Saturday and had individual photos with them.
This was the first meeting of the top Indian diplomat with Mr Trump after he was sworn in as the US President on January 20.
A 1980-batch Indian Foreign Service officer, Mr Sarna arrived in the US a few days before the November 8 presidential elections.
Post-elections, Mr Sarna and a few other foreign diplomats could not meet the then US President Barack Obama during the transition of power at the White House.
Before leaving the office, Mr Obama had issued an executive order formally credentialing all the new ambassadors, including Sarna, so as to facilitate them to attend the swearing in ceremony of Mr Trump. Spokesman of the ministry of external affairs from 2002 to 2008, Mr Sarna has previously been India’s ambassador to Israel and the Indian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.