Melbourne, June 2
Another Indian student was attacked by a group of men here Tuesday even as the provincial government of Victoria pushed for a plan that would entail tougher sentences for hate crimes.

The string of assaults on Indian students in Australia has now gone up to six in 22 days.

In Thiruvananthapuram, Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi on Tuesday said his ministry will prepare and maintain a register of all Indians studying abroad and streamline campus placements to foreign universities.

"I have already discussed the issue of maintaining a register of all students from our country who study abroad. We are working this out and very soon we will be implementing this," Vayalar Ravi told reporters.

"We have also come to know that certain agents who do campus placements for Indian students in foreign universities are not doing it in the proper way. We will streamline that area too," he said.

On Tuesday, the latest Indian victim, identified only as Singh, 21, was attacked by a group of men in suburban Melbourne after they stopped him and demanded cigarettes and money.

Singh, a nursing student at Chisholm College, Dandenong, in Melbourne's east, was slashed with a box-cutter knife carried by one of five men who confronted him in a car parking, ‘The Age’ website quoted a spokeswoman for Victoria police as saying.

The police said the victim told the men he was a non-smoker. The men then demanded money and when the student refused, he was slashed across the chest with the knife. The victim went to Frankston police station where he made a statement about the attack.

Earlier, there have been five attacks on Indian students in quick succession in Melbourne and Sydney, the two largest cities of Australia. The first took place May 9.

The string of attacks on Indian students in this capital of the Victoria province has led the provincial government to push for a plan that would have tougher sentences for hate crimes. The damage control action comes within months of Australia launching a multi-million dollar effort to woo Indian students.

In a plan being pushed by Attorney-General Rob Hulls, judges would have to take into account "hatred for or prejudice against a particular group of people" as an aggravating factor when sentencing offenders, ‘The Age’ reported Tuesday.

Tougher sentences would apply to crimes deemed to be based on victims' race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.

Indians form the second highest population of overseas students in Australia, after the Chinese. About 90,000 Indian students are currently studying in Australia. — IANS