Hyderabad: Three months after Telugu techie Srinivas Kuchibhotla was shot dead in a bar in Olathe, Kansas, USA, the shooter was charged with a hate crime on Friday by a federal grand jury.
The suspect, Adam W. Purinton, 51, had yelled at Srinivas, “Get out of my country” before he shot at him. Ian Grillot, a 24-year-old American man was also injured while intervening in the shooting.
Federal prosecutors on Friday announced that Purinton was indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly targeting two of the victims “because of their actual and perceived race, colour, religion and national origin”.
The indictment alleged that Purinton committed the offences after “substantial planning and premeditation” and “attempted to kill more than one person in a single criminal episode, and knowingly created a grave risk of death to others on the scene.”
He was also indicted on a charge of using a firearm, a 9mm semi-automatic handgun, in a crime of violence. The penalty in the federal case is either life in prison or death.
A decision on whether to seek the death penalty will be made later by Justice Department officials, experts say.
Besides the federal charges, Purinton was also charged by Johnson County prosecutors with first-degree murder and two counts of attempted first-degree murder and is being held in the Johnson County Jail on a $2 million bond. Sunayna Dumala, wife of Srinivas, expressed her relief that the shooter was charged by the grand jury. Speaking to the Kansas City Star newspaper, she said the federal charges brought relief to her heart.
She said she was glad that the legal process was moving fast. “I am so glad that things are moving faster than we thought. I always had faith that justice would be served,” she told the Kansas City Star and added that having a federal trial would bring greater visibility to the issue of hate.
