Thaindian News

Bhubaneswar, April 21 (IANS) Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik Saturday expressed shock over the murder in the US of a 24-year-old student from Odisha.

“I am deeply shocked by the brutal and savage killing of the young man studying in Boston. This is absolutely barbaric and horrible,” Patnaik said.

K. Seshadri Rao, who hailed from Odisha, was a student at the Graduate School of Management of the Boston University. He was found shot dead near an apartment on Allston Street, around a kilometre from the university campus in Brighton, on Thursday.

“He was a brilliant student. Somebody may have killed him out of jealously as he was good at studies,” said his grieving father Sudhakar Rao, a manager in Utkal Gramya Bank in Jeypore in Koraput district, about 380 km from here.

Patnaik also spoke to External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna who is now in Madrid in Spain and Indian ambassador to the US Nirupama Rao about the murder.

“Both of them assured him they are on the job seriously,” a statement issued late evening by Patnaik’s office here said.

The Indian ambassador said that an officer of the Indian consulate in New York had been sent to Boston. The Indian consulate in New York had taken charge of the body and it will be sent to India shortly, it said.

Patnaik has also written a letter to Krishna expressing the concern of people and requested steps so that the culprits were punished, the statement said.

The victim’s father said he had spoken to his son a few hours before he was killed. “He did not have any enmity or differences with anyone,” he said.

He said that he came to know about his son’s murder Friday through e-mails from the Indian consulate in New York and university authorities. “It is a big shock for the family,” he said.

According to investigators, Seshadri was shot in the head and leg by unidentified assailants.