Second Indian-Origin Student Death at Purdue University in Less Than 10 Days

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Another Indian American student was found dead at Purdue University on Monday, 5 February. Twenty-three-year-old Sameer Kamath, who has US Citizenship, was pursuing a doctorate in mechanical engineering at the university.

He was discovered dead in a nature preserve on Monday evening, the Warren County Coroner’s office reported.

Kamath had received his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and had enrolled at Purdue in 2021. He completed his master’s degree in the same field from Purdue University in August 2023.

News of Kamath’s death makes it the second Indian-origin student’s death at Purdue University in less than 10 days and five such incidents in three weeks.

On 30 January, Neel Acharya, a computer science double major student at Purdue University, was reported missing by his mother on social media platform X, and a day later, Neel was confirmed dead, according to the Tippecanoe County Coroner. The cause of his death is still unknown, and police officials in West Lafayette, in the US state of Indiana, have launched a probe to investigate what led to the deaths.

On January 16, Vivek Saini, a management graduate, was hammered to death, allegedly by a homeless drug addict, at a department store in Georgia's Lithonia city, where he worked part-time.

As Saini was leaving the store, Faulkner attacked him with a hammer. “He hit him from the back, then he kept on hitting for almost 50 times on the face and on the head,” an eyewitness informed the police.

On 20 January, Indian student Akul Dhawan was found dead outside the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), with his autopsy suggesting that the 18-year-old' died from hypothermia.

On 6 February, a video surfaced on social media where an Indian student from Hyderabad, Syed Mazahir Ali, was allegedly attacked by four robbers, who also snatched his phone in the United States’ Chicago on Sunday, 4 February.