India-West, News Report, Sunita Sohrabji, Posted: Jul 24, 2010

 
More than 800 people came together at a vigil July 18 at a high school in Old Bridge, N.J., to mourn the death of Prof. Divyendu Sinha, who was fatally attacked last month near his home, allegedly by five teenagers.

At the vigil, community leaders expressed outrage that the local school board had ignored earlier signs of bullying by the five accused teens. Several parents said their children knew who the attackers were and had lodged complaints against them in the past, which were ignored because the five are good athletes, and thus valuable to the school, the parents alleged.

The PAN IIT has also taken up Sinha’s case by writing a letter to U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder, asking that the case be investigated as a hate crime and that the juveniles accused of Sinha’s death be tried as adults.

On July 15, Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan announced that he would attempt to try the five suspects as adults.

Sinha, 49, was attacked late in the evening June 25 near his home in Old Bridge while on a walk with his wife Alka, and his two teenaged sons, Ravi and Ashish. The boys were also assaulted during the attack while defending their father, but suffered only minor injuries.

Sinha was transported to a local hospital, where he died from his injuries June 28. The 49-year-old computer scientist worked as a consultant for the IT company Siemens and as a part-time professor at the College of Staten Island.

Kaplan filed a waiver in New Brunswick Family Court, asking that the four 17-year-old males and the one 16-year-old male be tried as adults. A judge will determine if the waiver should be granted.

All have been charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

Police are continuing to investigate whether the attack against Sinha was racially motivated. The prosecutor’s office said that the investigation would focus on whether the teens knew of Sinha’s race when they exited the car to attack him, and whether the family was targeted because of their race or ethnicity.

Several minutes earlier, the teens had also assaulted a Caucasian motorist, Kaplan noted.

Hoboken city councilman Ravi Bhalla, an attorney in New Jersey, said if the accused were found guilty of “bias motivation,” as a hate crime is known by statute in the state, it could add an additional five years to their sentence. The sentence for first-degree “bias motivation” in the course of a murder is 20 years, he said.

“There are underlying circumstances which strongly suggest bias in this case,” Bhalla told India-West. “It was a random act of violence, with no relationship between the parties,” he said, adding that the races of those involved points to bias.

In 1987, a group calling itself the “Dotbusters” surfaced in New Jersey, telling a local newspaper that it would take any means necessary to drive Indian Americans out of New Jersey.

Later that summer, banker Navroze Mody was fatally attacked by 11 teenagers in Hoboken who shouted “Hindu, Hindu,” as they pummeled the young Parsi with bricks. Though the juveniles were charged with bias motivation, they were found not guilty of that crime, and convicted only on aggravated assault, receiving sentences of 10 years.

“Unfortunately, 23 years later, we are still dealing with this problem in municipalities with burgeoning Indian populations,” said Bhalla.

"We want the prosecutor's office to treat this as a hate crime until they find evidence that it's not such a crime," said Gunjan Bagla, president of PAN IIT USA.

“Here was a man with his family who had done nothing to invoke the wrath of these teenagers,” said Bagla of Sinha, who graduated from IIT Kharagpur in 1982. “We cannot take the low-key approach that this was a random crime.”

Hanjin Lee, a former student and close friend of Sinha’s, told India-West that Alka Sinha and her sons were attempting to deal with the aftermath of the death.

“There’s so much paperwork, financial problems, insurance issues,” said Lee, adding that the Indian American community has rallied around the family to provide much-needed support. Lee has set up a scholarship fund and a memorial Web site: www.divyendusinha.com.

An online petition in support of Sinha has collected more than 10,000 signatures and can be viewed at http:// www.petitiononline.com/divyendu/petition.html.