Indian-American arrested for threatening US varsity students, profs
Darpan News Desk IANS, 14 Mar, 2023 01:16 PM
New York, March 14 (IANS) A former University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student of Indian-origin was arrested after threatening students and staff at his alma mater with an email saying he planned to hide the flesh of their children in hamburger meat, according to media reports.
Arvin Raj Mathur, 32, of Grass Lake in Jackson County, was arrested on Friday at Detroit Metropolitan Airport and he is being temporarily held without bond, The Detroit News reported.
Mathur is being held temporarily without bond in St. Clair County Jail and awaiting a detention hearing on Tuesday in a federal court in Detroit.
A former graduate student in the Department of Anthropology, Mathur is charged with interstate or foreign threat to injure after authorities say he emailed threats from outside the US to nine Wisconsin residents, according to court records.
After being charged with emailing threats to nine people, he made a brief appearance in federal court on Saturday.
Among those emails were one to an anthropology professor saying that two of the other people he had threatened should "sue me right away," authorities said.
"Otherwise, I will murder their children. Call the police and a lawyer, otherwise, I will kill their children and hide their flesh inside of their burger meat," he added in the email, court records show.
He has also been accused of sending another email to an assistant professor of the college with the subject line, "We are going to kill your daughters." That person told officials that "he found the email disturbing and he was scared for his family's safety," according to court records.
"Mr Mathur is presumed innocent, and we'll await future proceedings to comment further," his defence lawyer, Amanda Bashi, wrote in an email to The Detroit News.
There was no immediate comment from a University of Wisconsin-Madison spokesman on Sunday.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency is developing an initiative for “fair access” to vaccines and treatments that it hopes will be ready within weeks. The mechanism was proposed shortly after Britain, Canada, France, Germany, the U.S. and other countries reported hundreds of monkeypox cases last month.
As of Friday, the U.S. had identified 45 cases in 15 states and the District of Columbia. More than 1,300 cases have been found in about 30 other countries outside the areas of Africa where the virus is endemic.
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The initial mandate allowed those who were fully vaccinated to show proof of a negative test within three days of travel, while unvaccinated people had to present a test taken within one day of travel.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian also rejected accusations that China had not fully cooperated with investigators, saying it welcomed a science-based probe but rejected any political manipulation.
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