New Delhi, Feb 25: In a heart-wrenching incident, a 32-year-old Indian engineer was shot dead in Olathe, Kansas by an American navy veteran in an alleged hate-crime. According to eye-witnesses quoted by local media, the assailant screamed “get out of my country” and opened fire at Srinivas Kuchibhotla, injuring him and his friend Alok Madasani who is also an engineer with Garmin, a GPS systems manufacturer. Kuchibhotla passed away in a hospital, whereas Madasani is recovering from his injuries. An American citizen named Ian Grillot also got injured as he tried to save the Indians. Also Read - Expect to Have COVID-19 Vaccine Doses For Every American by April: Trump

According to reports, the 51-year-old assailant Adam Purlington hid in another bar and was arrested by local police five hours after the horrific crime. He allegedly told the bartender that he had killed two middle-eastern people. This shocking report underscores a vital point–it was a hate crime intended against the people from the middle-east. The assailant confused the Indians with middle-eastern people and opened fire. Also Read - After US Announces Ban on TikTok From Sunday, Chinese App Says Will Fight Ongoing Crackdown

The family members of the deceased have blamed President Trump for the murder. Also Read - US to Ban TikTok, WeChat Downloads From September 20 Amid Security Concerns

“A racist person said ‘get out of my country’ and targeted my brother and his friend. This was for the first time that someone hurled racial abuse at my brother. Trump is only the primary reason as of now,” India Today quoted Kuchibhotla’s brother.

Injured Madasani’s father on Friday visited the grieving family of Srinivas. He said he was lucky that his son survived and the bullets missed him by a whisker while Srinivas, who was his son’s best friend, couldn’t. He asked parents to rethink before sending their wards to the US under the current situation.

United States President Donald Trump has been in the eye of storm since he assumed the oval office. The mercurial leader has maintained a hardline stance on immigration and has chest-thumped several times that he would secure the United States from Islamic terrorism. Even during his campaign for the presidential elections, Trump had openly and unabashedly relied on horrendous commenting on Muslims instilling paranoia in the minds of the citizens of the country. Read the most famous comment of the Republican nominee Trump in 2015 in which he spews venom against the Arabs.

“There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down,” he had said in a rally on November 15.

In another rally that year, he told thousands of supporters in Charleston, South Carolina, that he was calling for the total shutdown of Muslims entering the United Stated.

“Donald J. Trump is calling for a complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on,” he had said in a December 2015 rally.

All those who thought that the rhetoric was just a fluke and would not translate into action had their worst fears about Trump confirmed when he signed an executive order barring people from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. He barred refugees and citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the country for 90 days, sending shockwaves across the world. Many countries expressed displeasure in soft words, falling short of antagonising the new dispensation of the most powerful country in the world. However, the ban was stayed by a judicial order that attracted the ire of the President who vent out his anger on Twitter against the judge.

Trump’s policies and rhetoric have created an environment of insecurity for immigrants and religious minorities. They have also inflamed the sensibilities of certain sections of people who are failing to distinguish between terrorism and religion under the influence of divisive political agenda of Team Trump.

A Muslim woman who worked as a deputy national security advisor under President Barack Obama and continued with Trump administration left the job after 8 days of working under President Trump. She wrote about why she did that, underlining the insecurity under which the Muslims in the country are living after Trump’s accession to power.

“Like most of my fellow American Muslims, I spent much of 2016 watching with consternation as Donald Trump vilified our community. Despite this––or because of it––I thought I should try to stay on the NSC staff during the Trump Administration, in order to give the new president and his aides a more nuanced view of Islam, and of America’s Muslim citizens. I lasted eight days,” she wrote in the Atlantic.

“When Trump issued a ban on travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries and all Syrian refugees, I knew I could no longer stay and work for an administration that saw me and people like me not as fellow citizens, but as a threat,” she added.

Perhaps the perception of perceiving the Muslims as threat allegedly prompted the inebriated navy man to open fire at the two engineers who he judged from the colour of their skin. He had a gun, which is easily available and squeezed the trigger aiming the barrel at the ‘threats’ to his beloved nation. (Also read: Wife of Indian shot dead by American asks can Trump protect us)

Gun control

Gun violence has been the most burning topics in the United States for decades. The Barack Obama administration also witnessed mass gun violence in the country including mass killings on college and school campuses. The administration had come under pressure from civil right groups to make more stringent the lax gun laws that allowed guns in the hands of those who want without much ado. However, nothing concrete was done about it, ostensibly under the pressure of the gun lobby. On the other hand, Donald Trump found immigrants threat for the Americans not guns. Here is a certain statistics that are startling, to say the least.

A 2016 article by the BBC gives out some statistics.

Mass shooting: According to the Mass Shooting Tracker, 372 mass shootings caused the death of 475 people and wounded 1,870 people.

School shootings: 64 times guns opened fire in schools in 2015.

Of all the murders in the US in 2012, 60% were by firearm compared with 31% in Canada, 18.2% in Australia, and just 10% in the UK.

The death toll between 1968 and 2011 is more than all the deaths of US citizens in all the wars it has fought including the War of Independence. About 1.4 million people died by guns, 1.2 million died in wars.

According to Gun violence Archives, in 2017 alone, 8900 incidents of gun violence have been reported. 2,334 people have been killed, while 4470 people got injured. 93 children are amongst the killed. 52 incidents of mass shooting have been reported. Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani are the additions to these shameful numbers.

On the Trump administration’s radar, apart from refugees and immigrants from Muslim countries, are immigrants who ‘take American jobs’. Trump emphatically batted for building America using ‘American hands’ in his inaugural speech. He intends to do that by adopting protectionist economic measures, including cutting down work visas for skilled workers. The administration is making the H-1B visa rules more stringent. Nothing wrong about the policy as it is government’s prerogative–but the rhetoric is dangerous as Donald Trump with his speeches and comments against immigrants have pitted the poor whites, who couldn’t reap the benefits of globalisation, against immigrants.

The Trump administration has said that the President’s policies have nothing do with the incident. Understandably, Mr President, who is quite vocal on social media, is silent regarding the attack.

Recently, an eight-member group of US Congressmen visited India and met Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. Naturally, the issue of H-1B visa rules that threatens the $150 billion Indian IT industry came up.

“We talked about ways to help build the growing relationship between India and the US … and we discussed a number of issues. Now, the US has a new President — who is the first president in our country who has no previous political or government experience. He is a businessman. He likes to do deals, and he wants to do deals with India and other countries,” Congressmen Bob Goodlatte was quoted by the Indian Express.

After the incident, the Indian government must make the safety of the Indians in the United States as part of the ‘deals’ the businessman-cum-president Trump intends to make with India.

Meanwhile, Sunayana Dumala, the widow of Srinivas Kuchibholta, has asked the Trump government can it protect them. People are waiting for Trump to take to Twitter and respond to the query.