A picture obtained from the Hunstville, Alabama, police shows the shooting suspect, Amy Bishop. (AFP)

Washingon, Feb. 13: Breaking a two-year lull in incidents of campus violence in America involving Indians, Gopi K Podila, chairman of the department of biological sciences at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, was shot dead yesterday in a bizarre incident at an academic meeting on the campus.

Podila, originally from Andhra Pradesh, was killed by another biology professor, a 42 year-old woman, who is said to have been denied "tenure" or permanent job at the meeting that was discussing her future.

Two other fellow biology professors at the meeting were also murdered and three other university employees were wounded, according to police accounts.

Amy Bishop, an assistant professor at the university for the last six years, has been charged with the killings. If convicted, she could face the death penalty.

The university’s Huntsville campus, which has about 7,500 students, including some Indians, has been closed following the shooting. It has been confirmed that no other Indians, either students or academics, have been victims of the violence.

But the incident has brought back memories among Indian Americans of several incidents in 2007 and 2008 in which their compatriots were killed in gun violence on campuses in this country.

In April 2007, in the worst massacre in an American university, G V Loganathan, a professor in Virginia Tech's department of civil and environmental engineering and an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology in Chennai, fell victim to a shooting spree by a student on the campus.

In December 2007, two Indian students preparing for their Ph.D. at the Louisiana State University were shot dead in a flat in which one of them lived in Baton Rouge, capital of Louisiana.

A month later, Abhijit Mahato, a Ph.D. student at Duke University student in North Carolina, was shot dead at him home. Mahato was a graduate of Jadavpur University and later earned a masters degree from the IIT in Kanpur.

Robbery was the motive in the last two cases.

Sree Sreenivasan, dean of student affairs and digital media professor at New York's Columbia School of Journalism, said today that "almost all stories about gun violence at American universities are about acts perpetrated by students, so I was surprised to see a professor is the alleged shooter in the Alabama case."

Sreenivasan, a professor in the US for 17 years explained: "Getting tenure or being denied tenure -- a decision that is made outside your department, at the university level -- is a life changing milestone in a professor's career. You get tenure and, for all practical purposes, you have a job for life.

"You get denied tenure and it means some of your colleagues have, in effect, rejected the worthiness of your career's work. Not only is it embarrassing and confusing, you have year or less to find a new job, which often means uprooting your family and moving to a new city or state and establishing your credentials, research, etc. all over again."

India's consulate-general in Houston, which looks after Alabama, swung into action as soon as it received reports that Podila had been shot.

Sanjiv Arora, the consul general, said at the time of writing that Indian officials would offer all possible help to the next of kin of the late professor, including expeditious assistance to send his body to India for last rites if the family so desired.

Arora said relations between New Delhi and Alabama have been rapidly expanding in recent months, with the state's governor, Bob Riley, scheduled to lead a business mission to India, possibly in May.

Huntsville has a small, but distinguished Indian American community and the city created an Alabama India Business Partnership in 2005. It claims to be the first English-speaking city in America and is home to Nasa's Marshall Space Center employing many Indian Americans.

The governor said in a statement about the death of Podila and two other professors that "this is a horrible tragedy and my thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families. If there is any assistance state agencies can provide to local authorities, it will be provided."

Riley's swift response was in marked contrast to the reaction of Louisiana's Bobby Jindal, an Indian American who was governor-elect at the time Indian students were murdered in his virtual backyard in Baton Rouge.

Jindal offered no assistance to Indian consular officials who were in Louisiana to help the families of the victims and issued a condolence statement only after he was criticised for his silence.