IANS
Sydney, Jun 8: A 23-year-old Indian student was found unconscious and bleeding after being attacked here in Australia, making him the eleventh target in the past month in a wave of alleged racial attacks, a media report said Monday.
The Age newspaper reported Kamal Jit was attacked while walking home from St. Albans railway station in New South Wales late Saturday night.
This was the second attack in the past two weeks on Jit, who was previously pelted with eggs by masked men after getting off a late night train.
While walking home at about 1.40 a.m., Jit said he noticed three men acting suspiciously and tried to avoid them. He then saw two men come out of a pizza shop, while another waited in a car.
"The two guys pushed me to the ground and I was hit over the head, I think with a steel rod," the newspaper quoted Jit as saying.
He was found unconscious and bleeding by another Indian student walking home, the newspaper reported.
Jit, who required seven stitches after the blow to his head, said he did not want to live in St. Albans any longer.
"It is very bad because we pay a lot of money and we are living far away from our country and from our families and we are without protection," he said.
The latest attack happened at around the same time as an Indian student's car was torched in Melbourne Saturday night by suspected drug addicts. While police have ruled out a racist motive, the student has said it was a racial attack.
Vikrant Rajesh Ratan, 22, told police that his car and two other cars belonging to Indians in the apartment complex where he lives were burnt by some drug addicts whom he had refused to give money.
"They asked me for money, but I refused them. Next night they burnt my car because of that," Ratan said.
The Age quoted Ratan saying that he was "very, very, scared".
The spate of attacks on Indians have received huge media attention in India threatening Australia's image as a prominent study destination for students.
Education is Australia's third largest export industry worth more than AUS $15 billion a year, with about AUS $2 billion coming from Indian students.