News Desk
SYDNEY: Indian police said on Tuesday that one of the two gunmen behind the Bondi Beach mass shootings in Australia, Sajid Akram, was an Indian citizen who had left the country 27 years ago.
Akram and his son Naveed, listed on Australian immigration records as an Australian citizen, opened fire on people celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah on Sunday, killing 15.
“Sajid Akram is originally from Hyderabad, India. He migrated to Australia in search of employment approximately 27 years ago, in November 1998,” police in Telangana, a southern state, said in a statement.
The statement added that Akram had limited contact with his family in Hyderabad over the past 27 years and had visited India on six occasions after migrating, primarily for family matters such as property issues and visits to elderly parents. He did not travel to India even at the time of his father’s death.
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the father and son, who carried out one of the country’s deadliest mass shootings, were motivated by Islamic State ideology. Authorities said the attack appeared designed to spread panic among the nation’s Jewish community.
Telangana police said they had “no adverse record” against Sajid while he lived in India. “The family members have expressed no knowledge of his radical mindset or activities, nor of the circumstances that led to his radicalization,” the statement read. “The factors that led to the radicalization of Sajid Akram and his son, Naveed, appear to have no connection with India or any local influence in Telangana.”
Reports indicated that the pair had travelled to the Philippines before the shootings, and Australian authorities were investigating whether they had met Islamist extremists during the trip. Manila’s immigration department confirmed that the two spent almost all of November in the Philippines, with Davao in the southern island of Mindanao listed as their final destination, a region long affected by Islamist insurgencies against central government rule.
