M A I N   N E W S

Oz says Indian faked attack for claim 
Victoria premier slams media, govt 
Dinesh Kumar writes from Melbourne

While deposing before the court which granted him bail on the condition that he surrender his passport, report to the police thrice a week, not contact any witnesses or go anywhere near a point of international departure, the police said it had obtained security footage showing Jaspreet purchasing an opaque plastic container (later found in his house) and 15.96 litres of petrol the day before the attack.

Enquiries also led the police to believe that Jaspreet was in some financial difficulty and that he intended to sell his car but instead stood to gain A$ 11,000 from an insurance claim out of this particular incident. Jaspreet is in Australia on a student spouse visa and worked as a courier truck driver, while his wife is a student.

The investigations that disclosed that Indians, rather than Caucasian, were behind these two major incidents led Brumby to term the Indian media’s reports of alleged racist violence and attacks against Indians in Victoria as “unbalanced” and to also criticise “some representatives in the Indian government” for the way they “portray these events”. However, he did not identify the representatives of the Indian government.

“I think the point needs to be made that the people who have been charged with that murder (Ranjodh Singh) are both Indians,” he told reporters in Melbourne.

“And we’ve had this (Jaspreet Singh) case, which attracted a lot of attention in India, and the police has charged an individual with setting fire to himself. So I hope that there is some balance to the debate, some balance to the reporting in India and certainly to date that balance hasn’t been there.”

Need for damage control: Oz envoy

New Delhi: “Australia has zero tolerance for violence and zero tolerance for racism. Both are reflected in Australian law, and in the penalties the courts are handing out,”Australian High Commissioner Peter Verghese said in a statement here.

Varghese said the Jaspreet incident “had done serious damage to Australia’s image in India. It had fuelled the view that Indians had been singled out for racist attacks in Australia.” He said his arrest, together with the arrest of three Indian nationals for the murder of Ranjodh Singh, should be a lesson to all not to cry “racism” every time something bad happened to an Indian in Australia. “Both cases had been widely reported in the Indian media as racist attacks,” he added, hoping that “those (who) carried such reports would now set the record straight”.

The Australian envoy’s statement followed some harsh comments made by the Indian Foreign Minister yesterday in which he wondered why Indians were being subjected to attacks Down Under. “Why in Australia should there be attacks on Indians. Students from other countries are also studying in Australia. Why Indians are being singled out.” — TNS

New Delhi summons envoy from Australia

Melbourne: India has called its High Commissioner to Australia Sujatha Singh for consultations in the backdrop of continuing attacks on Indians. She will be in India for about a week from February 10 and is expected to brief External Affairs Minister SM Krishna and Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao on the attacks. She is also expected to give her assessment about what steps the Australian government is taking to prevent further incidents and discuss the various options available to the Indian government. Krishna had met his Australian counterpart Stephen Smith in London twice last week on the sidelines of a multilateral conference on Afghanistan where this issue had come up for discussion. — TNS