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Roommate held in murder of Indian-origin student in the US
A local Indianapolis news outlet, WRTV, quoted local police officials as saying that an autopsy had found that Chheda died from “multiple sharp force traumatic injuries” and the manner of death was homicide.
A Purdue University student was arrested on Wednesday in the killing of his Indian-Americanroommate, authorities said on Wednesday.
Varun Manish Chheda, a 20-year-old data science student at Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana, was killed by his roommate late on Tuesday night, in yet another instance of brutality in the US.
A local Indianapolis news outlet, WRTV, quoted local police officials as saying that an autopsy had found that Chheda died from “multiple sharp force traumatic injuries” and the manner of death was homicide.
Chheda’s roommate, a 22-year-old student from South Korea, reported the death to police himself and is now under arrest. Purdue police chief Lesley Wiete said Ji Min Sha, cybersecurity major, who goes by the nickname “Jimmy,” called police at around 12:45am “alerting us to the death of his roommate” in their first-floor dorm room on the campus in West Lafayette, which is about 104km northwest of Indianapolis, Wiete said.
He has not been formally charged. Wiete said investigators don’t know why Chheda was killed, but they think he was awake at the time.
“I believe this was unprovoked and senseless.” Wiete told reporters. Chheda had grown up in Indiana and had won several academic prizes in science.
Purdue University president, Mitch Daniels, in a letter to the university community, called the event “tragic” and assured that the safety and security of students was a topmost priority.
“This is as tragic an event as we can imagine happening on our campus and our hearts and thoughts go out to all of those affected by this terrible event,” he said.
(With inputs from agencies)
