Click to play videoDurham (North Carolina): Abhijit Mahato, a doctorate student of engineering at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, was murdered on January 18. His neighbours on the campus are still living with the shock and horror of it.
Says Abhijit Mahato's neighbour, Vekram Jenarthanam, “The fact that it happened right next door is definitely a bit disconcerting. The thing is whenever I walk in, I just can't forget that.”
For other Indian students at Duke, that sense persists.
“In general, for the week or two weeks after that, we were really scared. It's getting slightly better now as we get along with our lives,” says Duke University student Akshay Raut.
Campuses in America have become more unsafe than before. Over the last 12 months, starting with the Virginia Tech tragedy in April 2007, a number of incidents have been reported, including the recent killing of five students at the Northern Illinois University on February 14.
For Indian students, this offers a different aspect of culture shock.
“It's very shocking. I mean, you've seen the movie Bowling for Columbine and you know how guns are very easy to get out here and that's kind of really sad. It's shocking, it's freaky because you don't know if the person sitting next to you could just pull out a gun,” says another student, Jaineel Aga.
Campus security will be an important factor for Indians seeking to study in the US. Before Mahato's murder, two Indian students became homicide victims at the Lousiana State University in Baton Rouge on December 13 last year.
The highest number of international students enrolling in American universities in 2006/07 were from India - nearly 84,000.
For them, taking extra precautions on campus has become a way of life.
It's been a year of living dangerously on American campuses and obviously, Indian students have been affected just as much with incidents of shootings in their midst.
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