'Don't come to this country. I am lucky to have escaped'

NEW DELHI: Twenty-year-old Sunny Bajaj has made up his mind. He will leave Australia for good. The Shalimar Bagh boy, who studied at Sachdeva Public School in west Delhi and is pursuing accounting at Deakins University for the past one-and-a-half years now, has been jolted by the attack on him in Melbourne on Friday night when he was racially abused and thrashed, leaving him with bruises and a fractured finger.

He was so traumatised by the incident that he skipped his exams on Monday. He told TOI from Melbourne: ������ If Indian students really think they can cope with such abuses, they should come here. But my suggestion is, don���t come to this country. I was lucky to have escaped ��� otherwise I would have been in coma now.������

Bajaj is the latest victim of a spate of racial attacks in Australia in the past two months, wich shows no sign of halting.

It was on Friday night, around 8.15pm local time, that he was assaulted by two men in Boronia, Melbourne. ������ I was returning to my car after shopping when two men accosted me and asked for money. When I said I didn���t have any, they began abusing me and then attacked me without any provocation. One of them was white and the other seemed to be an African.������

Bajaj said the men clearly knew he was an Indian because ������ they abused me saying ������ f****** Indian c*** . They slammed the car door on my hand, fracturing my finger, hit me on my head and punched me in the stomach and face.������ He said he had reported the matter to the police.

Bajaj was to come to India on a vacation after exams. ������ Things are coming out into the open only now. I know of so many cases of racial abuse, which may not have resulted in physical assault like it has been happening of late. All kinds of dirty things are said to us. Even after the protests, things have not changed at all,������ he said.