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.
Students at the Ternopil Medical University in Ukraine capital Kyiv are in constant touch with the Indian Embassy. The varsity is also extending assistance to the students. There are around 20,000 Indian nationals in Ukraine. Most of them are medical students.
The announcement marks this week's one-year anniversary of a supply chain review that found the U.S. is overly dependent on foreign sources, especially China.
Court documents allege there were also two undocumented Indian nationals in the van, along with snacks and provisions. Not far away, in southern Manitoba, RCMP and border officials discovered four frozen bodies, later identified as a couple and their two children from India, who investigators believe were part of a larger group making their way to the United States.
Around 20 medical students from Bareilly and Rampur district are stuck in Ukraine, following border tension with Russia. They want the government of India to evacuate them, according to family members. There are currently around 50 students from Bareilly studying in Ukraine.
The flight ticket prices have risen from Rs 50,000 to over Rs 70,000 and the students say it is this financial hurdle that is forcing them to stay put despite the advisory by the Indian government. On normal days, the flight tickets would cost Rs 21,000-Rs 26,000. But now, due to the Russia-Ukraine tensions, the rates have jacked up.
Former Amazon employee Rohit Kadimisetty has been sentenced to 10 months in prison with a fine of $50,000 for a fraud and bribery scheme targeting the e-commerce giant's online Marketplace. The US Department of Justice (DoJ) said in a statement that Kadimisetty, 28, of Northridge, California, pleaded guilty to conspiracy in September 2021.
