Supporters of a South African Indian student who was injured after being allegedly beaten up by a group of men in Bangalore have started a fund to get him back home.
Abhishek Bunwarie, 19, was allegedly beaten up last Thursday when he intervened to stop some men who were hurling abuses at his two fellow female students while they were on an outing in Bangalore.
Bunwarie is studying hotel management at the Acharya Institute of Management Science in Bangalore on a scholarship from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations.
His mother, Ashika Bunwarie, told local media here that although her son was discharged from hospital on Monday, he still needed extensive treatment for serious facial injuries and had a cast on his right arm.
She said although the two women were not physically harmed, friends had commended Bunwarie for avoiding a situation where they might well have been attacked.
The mother said her family was overwhelmed by the support they have received from many quarters in both South Africa and India.
"You worry about your child being in a foreign country all alone But his friends there have been totally supportive, sending me constant updates while they visited him in hospital day and night."
Bunwarie also thanked the Indian consul-general in South Africa, Pradeep Gupta, and staff at the university who had taken care of all the hospital arrangements for her son, adding that funds were now being raised to get him home to recuperate.
Huge disruption of academic activities through unrest and racial quota policies at South African universities have led to many South African Indian parents sending their children to India for further studies, either through scholarships or by paying for it themselves.
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