As Australian police alleged that an Indian had faked an incident of racial attack, Victorian Premier John Brumby on Wednesday criticised the Indian media and “some officials” for hyping the assaults against the community members.
Mr. Brumby was miffed with the Indian media and some officials for “unbalanced reporting” and referred to the case of Melbourne-based Jaspreet Singh, who, police alleged, pretended he had been set on fire in an unprovoked attack, the AAP reported.
“I think I’ll make a couple of comments and in a sense they go, as much as anything, to the way the Indian media and the, to a lesser extent some representatives in the Indian government, portray these events,” he said.
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His comments came as police said Singh had faked the January 8 incident for seeking insurance benefits to overcome his financial woes.
On the murder of Ranjodh Singh, whose half-burnt body was found on a roadside, Mr. Brumby said: “I think the point needs to be made that the people who have been charged with that murder are both Indians,” he said.
“And we’ve had this [Jaspreet Singh] case, which attracted a lot of attention in India, and police have charged an individual with setting fire to himself. So I hope that there is some balance to the debate, some balance to the reporting in India and certainly to date that balance hasn’t been there,” he said.
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