Saurabh Bhalerao assault case
Ryan Marsh, a 19-year-old white American from New Bedford, has been sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in state prison after he admitted to the kidnap, torture and stabbing of 24-year-old Saurabh Bhalerao whom he mistook for a Muslim. Marsh is one of the four youths charged in the attack.

The incident took place on June 22, 2003, when Bhalerao went for pizza delivery at Weld Street apartment where he was beaten, burned with lit cigarettes and robbed by four

men because they apparently thought he was Muslim.

The assailants then drove Bhalerao in his car to the neighboring town of Fairhaven, where he freed himself from the trunk, grabbed a hammer and swung at one of his assailants who then stabbed the delivery man in the abdomen.

The attack began as a robbery but escalated into an attempted murder, investigators said. “While they were beating him, they came to think that he was a Muslim... and that’s when they became vicious and the violence dramatically escalated,” said Gary Souza, chief of police in Fairhaven, MA, last year.



21 years for killing Bangladeshi
A Poughkeepsie man who shot and killed Mamun Miah, a young Bangladeshi immigrant who was working in a Poughkeepsie deli, faces at least 21 years behind bars for the crime, according to Poughkeepsie Journal.

Eduardo Montijo, 21, has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. Montijo said he walked into the Worrall Avenue Deli at about 9 p.m. Dec. 7, 2003, carrying as sawed-off rifle. He said he pointed the gun at Miah, and asked him tothe cash register.

He said Miah refused. “He moved a little, I jerked back and the gun went off,” Montijo told the judge. He tried tothe cash register but could not do so, Montijo said.

Miah, 19, was working part-time at the deli while attending Dutchess Community College. He had immigrated from Bangladesh about a year earlier.

(Compiled from news dispatches by Sushweta Ghosh)