On Friday night, a doctoral student in the engineering program at Duke University was shot to death in his off-campus apartment (thanks, Zuni123). The parallels of this tragic crime to the LSU murders cannot be ignored; like then, our tip line is the conduit for confusion and frustration over another senseless murder. Via The Raleigh Chronicle:
The victim has been identified as Abhijit Mahato, age 29, a Ph.D. engineering candidate who was from India and was studying in the United States, Duke University officials said on Saturday afternoon.
“He was found by friends who came by the apartment to check on him Friday night,” said Kammie Michaels of the Durham Police Department. Mahato was pronounced dead on the scene when police arrived, say police.
Durham Police said they do not yet have a motive for the shooting. Their investigation is continuing…
Mahato, originally from Tatangar, India, was studying for an engineering doctorate degree focused on computational mechanics at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering. He was in his second year in the program, says the school.
Larry Moneta, Duke’s vice president for student affairs, said the university has begun “reaching out” to Mahato’s friends and to his family in India, as well as to Indian and other international students on campus. It is offering counseling services and has begun considering appropriate ways of commemorating Mahato’s life.
One way they didn’t commemorate it was by finding it a happy opportunity to test a school safety feature.
Here’s how the victim’s adviser, Tod Laursen described him:
“He made friends very easily and always had a smile on his face,” Laursen said through Duke University. “Our research team was particularly close to Abhijit. He was very well read in both poetry and literature, and enjoyed conversation with others about what they were reading.”
More about a stolen life:
On his website at Duke, Mahato said his hobbies included reading books, playing chess, and photography.
Before coming to Duke, Mahato worked for two years for the GE Global Research Center in Bangalore, India where he focused on finite element analysis, a computer-simulation technique used in engineering.
Mahato earned his mechanical engineering degree from Jadavpur University in India in 2001 and a master of technology degree from the Indian Institute for Technology in Kanpur in 2004.
Mahato was very proud of his Indian heritage and seemed to enjoy talking about his hometown.
“My upbringing was in Kolkata; the City of Joy, the city of intellectuals, and much much more,” said Mahato on his website at Duke. “My native language is bengali. We, Bengalis, have a very distinct and rich culture.”
Mahato’s website is here. May his memory be eternal.
184 · Jangali Jaanwar said
In future when the difference between living in US and India becomes less and less, current demands of higher standards from the world in terms of travel warnings for US citizens, health check-up reports etc for visitors to US, will be replicated by India in the areas of safety of living, human rights ( religious freedom, racism ), quality of life in US etc. This will be an inevitable effect of equalization of standard of living. Very long you may very well see “Amnesty International of India” poking into US. You can see it very well happening wrt to global warming where the US has poor record.
Reread my comment, and see if you can refute that, not your paraphrase of it which calls Jews silly, exhorts them to be gassed, and ignores my question about gang violence.
I do accept your apology, though, but I am not going to get into a further discussion with you, since you seem to be more interested in personal insults than actually making your case.
You questioned whether guns could have protected Jews from Hitler, calling it a “silly claim”. The Jews in Warsaw were from that point of view indulging in a “silly” exercise then weren’t they ? I didn’t make any exhortation, merely pointed out what would have quickly happened if they had been convinced their rebellion was silly, since they were resorting to a poorly armed, doomed fight against a heavily armed enemy. Apparently the sacrcasm in my statement was missed.
Ok… using the logic of criminal gangs use of guns(who are anyway banned by law from gun ownership) as a reason ban legal access to guns for defensive purposes is like banning cars because illegal high speed street racers kill themselves and bystanders with their extreme actions. Do you think the 100 million or so car owners who mostly use their vehicles for commuting/business should have all their driving privileges/cars taken away because of what those street drifters do ?
What was the personal insult in my earlier response ?
I have to agree – great metaphor, JJ. 🙂 And oops on the ABD thing. Though I’m a 1.5 too and I guess that if you’ve been raised for the most part on the U.S. sometimes you pretty much are an ABD.
Are Reality Check’s/Prema’s comments going to be deleted?
Yes, but you should know that your commenting on the thread helped bring it to our attention. If stuff like that stays up, often it’s because we don’t know about it.
I just wanted to chime in here and say that this was not a hate crime, but a random stupid act. Stephen Oates lived right next door to me and is not a hood rat or ghetto trash or anything like that at all. As a matter of fact, he lives in probably one of the nicest houses on the block– he’s just a stupid kid that got going into stuff that got way out of his control. He and William Smith and William’s younger brother broke into my house in the spring and stole a PS2, an Xbox and several other things and thanks to the city of Durham, only spent 2 months behind bars even though they were both on parole and had a warrant against them for a break-in at Stephen’s mom’s house after she kicked him out. I can’t express how sorry I am that this brilliant mind is no longer here because of a bad seed from my neighborhood.
Two tragic stories intersect: UNC student body president Eve Carson’s co-murderer also charged as part of Abhijit Mahato’s murder.
Duke honors Mahato with a fellowship.
This makes me so happy. I’m a tarheel alum and my sis is there now and she was very effected by Eve carson’s death. She knew her somewhat as they were both bio majors and my sis thought she was such a lovely girl. But we both couldn’t help but think that the news of the indian student’s death at Duke got nada attention or the Indian grad students at La state univ.
We did go thru in our minds, “Well Eve was student body president…a more prominent position than a typical student, so perhaps that’s why she got more coverage”. But I can’t help but think there was some bias, that may have also effected the police’s efforts in capturing the killer. Perhaps if they had put more effort and if more attention had been given the Indian Duke student, than Eve’s untimely death could have been avoided too.