NEW DELHI: India demanded the “strongest action” from the United States government on Sunday after an Indian expatriate was killed and another wounded in a suspected hate crime in Kansas.

Indians at home and in the US have expressed shock at the shooting of the two young engineers by a drunk white man who allegedly screamed “Get out of my country!” The two men, who had been living in the US for the past few years, were targeted at a bar in Olathe, a suburb of Kansas City, late on Wednesday.

“USA should respond to this incident. American president and people of America, they should come out openly to condemn such actions... and then take strongest action,” Information and Broadcasting Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu was quoted by the Press Trust of India as saying.

Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32, was killed and Alok Reddy Madasani, 32, wounded in the attack. Both worked as aviation systems engineers for GPS manufacturer Garmin.

“These kind of incidents involving racial discrimination are shameful,” Naidu said in Hyderabad where the victims’ families live.

“They will dent the image of USA. So the US president, administration and civil societies should unequivocally respond and condemn such incidents.”

US authorities on Wednesday detained 51-year-old Adam Purinton at a restaurant after he claimed he had killed two Middle Easterners.

He has been charged with premeditated first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder and is being held on a $2 million bond.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation is trying to determine if the shooting was a hate crime.

Madasani has been released from hospital and his parents were due to leave for the US.

His father Jagan Mohan Reddy, a chief engineer with the Telangana state government, told AFP they would spend at least a week in the US before “taking stock of what to do (next)”.

He said his son and the deceased were very good friends and had known each other for at least six or seven years in the US.

“It is unthinkable that they have been separated like this,” Reddy added.

Published in Dawn, February 27th, 2017