‘Please help me’: Indian student attacked in Chicago issues video plea; wife writes to Jaishankar

An Indian student who was allegedly attacked in the United States on Sunday issued a plea for help, saying that he was assaulted and robbed by four people who “kicked and punched” him. His wife, based in Hyderabad, has written to External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar requesting assistance to get him medical treatment.

A video of Syed Mazahir Ali, a master’s degree student at Indiana Wesleyan University, bleeding profusely from his face, seeking help, has been widely shared on social media, along with a CCTV clip of a man being chased by three men with their faces covered.

.@DrSJaishankar Sir, One Syed Mazahir Ali from Hyderabad, Telangana pursuing Masters in IT from Indiana Weslay University was robbed & attacked on 4th Feb by four persons in Chicago, Since this attack Syed Mazahir Ali is under mental shock and is in need of help.Ask… pic.twitter.com/Cf2jeMAvPw

— Amjed Ullah Khan MBT (@amjedmbt) February 6, 2024

His wife, Syeda Ruquliya Fatima Rizvi, in a letter to Jaishankar, said that she received a call at 6 pm on February 4 from her husband’s friend stating that Mazahir Ali had been attacked very badly and robbed near his residence in Chicago. She said that even though she got in touch with her husband later, “he was in shock and unable to talk to me and his entire face was bleeding.”

She requested the minister for help with her husband’s medical treatment, and for assistance in facilitating travel arrangements for her and their three minor children in joining him in the US.

‘They kicked and punched me’

In the video, a rattled Mazahir Ali described the harrowing experience as blood coated his forehead, nose and mouth.

“I was walking down the road, carrying food, when four people caught me and kicked and punched me. Someone took my phone too,” he said, adding, “Please help me bro, please help me.”

In another video clip of an interview he gave to a media house, he said, “This is something I cannot forget. He pointed a gun at me. There are two wounds on my head.” He added that he was hit on his legs, his face, his back and ribs. He was later taken to the hospital where he was reportedly treated for several cuts and bruises.

It quoted his friend as saying that they had noticed a black sedan circling the block at 1 am right before the robbery happened. The report said that according to surveillance footage from a neighbour’s CCTV, the attackers jumped out of the car and waited for a victim.

This is the latest in a series of attacks on Indian American students in the past month. Four Indian students were found dead in various parts of the country in January 2024.

Shreyas Reddy Benigeri, a student at Lindner School of Business in Cincinnati, was found dead in Ohio last week. “Police investigation is underway. At this stage, foul play is not suspected,” the Consulate General of India in New York had said in a post on X.

A week earlier, Neel Acharya, an Indian computer science and data science student at Purdue University in Indiana, had been reported missing by his mother. He was found dead on campus.

On January 16, Vivek Saini, an MBA graduate in the US, was brutally killed with repeated blows from a hammer by a homeless man inside a store in Lithonia, Georgia. On January 20, Akul Dhawan, an 18-year-old Indian-American student, was found dead with signs of hypothermia on the back porch of a building near the University of Illinois.

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