Vic: New group to stem violent attacks on Indians
21 Jan 2009 6:27 PM
MELBOURNE, Jan 21 AAP - Police and community groups have moved to tackle a rise in violent robberies against Indian people in Melbourne with proposed measures including a bus to take students safely home.
The Police-Indian Western Reference Group met for the first time on Wednesday to find ways to tackle the surge in robberies in Melbourne's west.
On the agenda is a volunteer-based bus service to ferry Indian students safely from Sunshine train station to their homes and a peer support program to train local Indian residents to support victims of crime in their community.
The new reference group was established after an armed robbery at a Sunshine supermarket in December left a man in a coma, Inspector Scott Mahony said.
Four teenagers and one man were last month charged with attempted murder, armed robbery and assault over the incident.
Robberies in the western suburbs rose from 417 in the 2006-07 financial year to 530 in 2007-08, police said.
Police believe about 30 per cent of robbery victims in the region are of Indian appearance.
The Embona Armed Robbery Task Force based at Footscray recently doubled in size in a bid to tackle robberies in Melbourne's west.
Insp Mahony said the Indian community and all people living in the western suburbs should feel assured police were working to reverse the trend.
"Police are concerned by the violent nature of some of these assaults and robberies and we have put in place a number of measures to tackle the issue," he said.
Two men were sentenced to youth detention in December for their part in a vicious bashing in Footscray that killed Victoria University researcher Zhongjun Cao, 41, and seriously injured another man, Binesh Mosaheb, in Sunshine.
The group attacked Mosaheb thinking he was Indian, although he was Mauritian.
In another incident, Indian-born former Australian Medical Association president Dr Mukesh Haikerwal, 47, was beaten with a baseball bat in Williamstown on September 27 last year.
Indian taxi drivers have also been the subject of repeated attacks, with the stabbing of a 23-year-old cabbie from India in April last year prompting a mass rally in Melbourne streets.
Representatives from the Consulate General of India, the Indian International Student Advisory Centre and the Federation of Indian Associations of Victoria took part in the inaugural meeting.
