An Australian Delegation today said that some of the attacks on Indian students in Melbourn and other cities were cases of simple robbry. The urged the Indian Students’ community to not panic as it is a safe country.
“These attacks were not racial and mere opportunistic and petty robbery and most of the accused were teenagers who took to petty crimes,” Colin Walters, a senior official from the Australian Department of Education, who led a high-level delegation touring Indian cities, said referring investigations.

Talking to newspersons he said that accused were between the age group of 14 and 18 and attacked the victims for money and other costly belongings.

Terming Australia a ’safe’ place he said that there are 1,00,000 Indian students alone currently studying in the universities of Australia. A lot of steps have been taken to prevent attacks on students by strengthening legislation, said Walter.

Without giving any number, the official said the accused have been arrested, issued a chargesheet and trials are on.

Unfortunately, the victims were at wrong places at the wrong time and the attacks were not racial as portrayed by some sections of media in India, Walter said.

“Australia is not a racist country as we were one of the first countries to have legislation against racism 40 years back,” Walters

Amid protests on the issue of attack on Indian students in Australia and the demand to make a statement by the government in this regard in the Lower House of the Indian Parliament (Lok Sabha) Peter Varghese, Australia’s intelligence chief and a close aide of Premier Kevin Rudd, has been nominated as the new High Commissioner to India. Indian-Australian Varghese is currently heading the Office of National Assesments (ONA). He will take over the charge in August from John McCarthy

According to India’s premier news agency the announcement comes as Kamal Jit, a 23-year-old Indian student, was beaten up for the second time in a fortnight by a group of youths here.