Two Australians charged with assaulting Indian

BRISBANE - A 20-year-old man and a teenager were charged with assault Saturday for attacking and robbing an Indian here Thursday night.

The 25-year-old victim was using a telephone box in Macgregor, in Brisbane’s south, at 10.40 p.m. Thursday when he was set upon and punched to the side of the head and robbed of his wallet and cigarettes.

Police have charged two people with violence while in company over the incident, Australian news agency AAP reported Saturday.

The 15-year-old boy would be dealt with under the Juvenile Justice Act.

Two Indians were viciously attacked in Brisbane Thursday night and early Friday morning. Police said that attacks were not linked and weren’t racially motivated. The second person to be attacked that night was an Indian taxi driver.

There has been a string of attacks on Indians in Australia with taxi drivers being targeted in some recent incidents.

Three Indian taxi drivers were attacked in different Australian cities Jan 16. While a 25-year-old Indian taxi driver was assaulted in Melbourne, two Indian taxi drivers, one of whom was a student, were attacked in Ballarat.

The attacks came a day after a man was sentenced to three months in jail for assaulting and threatening to kill another Indian taxi driver in Melbourne.

The spate of attacks on Indians in Australia has caused an outcry in India. Two of the vicious attacks proved fatal.

While Ranjodh Singh’s body was found Dec 29, another Indian, Nitin Garg, was fatally stabbed in Melbourne Jan 2. An Indian was set on fire in Melbourne Jan 9 while another Indian was assaulted at Coogee beach in Sydney Jan 11.