Officials in U.S. and India Condemn Shooting of Sikh Man in Washington State
India’s minister of external affairs, Sushma Swaraj, said she had spoken to the victim’s father, who said his son was "out of danger
and recovering in a private hospital." The attack bore a troubling resemblance to the shooting on Feb. 22 of Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani, two immigrants from India who were shot by another patron in a bar outside Kansas City, Mo.
By ELLEN BARRYMARCH 5, 2017
NEW DELHI — American and Indian officials on Sunday swiftly condemned the shooting of a Sikh man in a suburb of Seattle,
which followed by less than two weeks a similar episode in Kansas and amid a high-level crackdown on immigration.
The Sikh Coalition, a Sikh rights group based in New York, has urged the authorities in Washington State to investigate the shooting as a hate crime,
and called on top officials in Washington to forcefully condemn such attacks.
Since the Kansas shooting, many Indians have expressed concerns
that racially motivated violence will rise in the coming years, as President Trump leads an effort to curtail legal immigration and deport illegal immigrants.
The 39-year-old man was in the driveway of his home in Kent, Wash., working on his car on Friday nightwhen a white man, wearing a mask over the lower part of his face, confronted him
and then shot him in the arm, the Seattle Times reported.
Immigration was a central focus of high-level talks last week in Washington, where India’s foreign
secretary, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, met with senior American foreign policy officials.