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.
There are an estimated 25,000 Indian students in Ukraine alone who are pursuing medicine, engineering, and science courses. More than 2,500 students from Tamil Nadu are estimated to be studying in Ukraine.
The Foreign Secretary stated that External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has spoken to his Polish, Romanian, Hungarian, and Slovakian counterparts for setting up a camp at border areas for evacuation of stranded Indian nationals. He also stated that flight options are available through Dubai and Istanbul and that the Indian Embassy continues to be operational in Ukraine.
The Ministry of External Affairs in touch with all the neighbouring countries surrounding Ukraine to even evacuate Indian citizens. Many citizens who were to fly back to India were left at the airport after closure of Ukrainian airspace following Russia's Vladimir Putin announcement of a military operation in Ukraine.
Amidst the prevailing tension, the Indian students stranded in Ukraine are left with no choice but to queue up outside the Indian Embassy in Kiev seeking the authorities' help as they ran out of food and money. The Russian military actions in Ukraine have triggered panic among all sections, including students from India.
Clashes have also been taking place around the capital Kiev in the north and the Black Sea port cities of Odesa and Mariupol in the south, the report said. Air strikes from Russia have been carried out on Ukrainian military bases and airports, with fierce fighting reported around a key airport near Kiev.
The top of the Tower shone bright with a burnt orange top Tuesday, February 22, 2022 to celebrate student Jaskaran Singh’s victory in the “Jeopardy! National College Championship" shared the university's website.
