Srinagar, April 23: A Kashmiri research scholar at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, has returned home and says he might quit the course because of racial slurs from fellow scholars who scribbled abuses on his door and clothes.

Hashim Sofi, 27, was allegedly targeted on Friday, the same day that Union home minister Rajnath Singh wrote to all the chief ministers to protect Kashmiris staying in their states from harassment.

Today, Prime Minister Narendra Modi too asked all the states to reach out to Kashmiri students studying in their institutions.

Hashim said he had been shocked on Friday morning to see a slanderous message written on his door at the Malviya Bhawan hostel, whose inmates are research scholars, proclaiming him a terrorist because of his Kashmiri origins.

"A group of people were standing outside. I had an argument with them and asked them why they were doing it secretly rather than saying it to my face," the Bandipore boy, who had joined the institute 20 days ago, told The Telegraph.

He said he had informed his guide Anirudh Roy, who was deeply hurt by the development.

Hashim alleged that sometime later, he found racially insulting messages scrawled on his clothes that he had hung out to dry.

"I complained to the chief warden, after which I was allotted a room in the staff quarters and assured that action would be taken against the culprits," he said.

But his frightened family asked him to return. "I took my guide's permission and returned (to the Valley on Saturday)."

The institute said Hashim left without telling anyone.

Hashim told this newspaper he had been too afraid to lodge a police complaint lest he be booked in a false case.

"My career demands that I go back but my conscience does not allow me to.... I think I will not return to that place again," he said.

He wrote on his Facebook page: "I wonder why such animosity for the Kashmiris.... Such an insult cannot be accepted. I wanna know (from) my Indian friends why so much intolerance."

Hashim's is the second complaint of harassment in Rajasthan in a week, after a group of Kashmiris studying at Mewar University were allegedly called terrorists and beaten up at a market in Chittorgarh.

Billboards declaring Kashmiris as stone-throwers and asking them to leave have surfaced in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh.

Giridhar M. Kunkur, chief of publications and media relations at the Pilani institute, acknowledged in an email to this newspaper that "objectionable comments" had indeed been scrawled on Hashim's door.

He, however, added that no such complaint had "till date" come from "any other scholar or student from Jammu and Kashmir" at the institute.

Kunkur said the institute had been admitting students from Jammu and Kashmir at undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD levels for a long time and had a "good number" of them on the campus currently.

"Mr Sofi had reported to the chief warden... that someone had written some objectionable comments on the door of his hostel room and on two of his T-shirts that were kept to dry in the balcony outside his room," the statement said.

"He said that this has happened on the intervening night of Thursday, 20 April, and Friday, 21 April, 2017. Since Mr Sofi had also informed the hostel superintendent, Malviya Bhawan, ... the latter got the comments immediately cleaned from the door of the hostel room."

Kunkur said the chief warden had met Hashim and "assured all assistance and help to him".

"He made arrangements to shift him from the hostel to a residential quarters. The chief warden got in touch with the associate dean, students' welfare, and they inquired the matter from the hostel superintendent and the warden, got in touch with the chief security officer and called a meeting of all the people," he wrote.

"Exactly what has happened is yet to be ascertained. The enquiry report of the chief warden was submitted to the associate dean, SWD."

Kunkur added that the institute authorities had learnt today that "Mr Sofi is not available in his allotted quarters and has left without informing his project investigator and other authorities of the institute".

"He is also not available on phone. However, the institute has taken a very serious note... and has asked the standing committee on student affairs to further investigate the matter and report back swiftly."

Kunkur said that Hashim was a "research project staff, a JRF (Junior Research Fellow) in the pharmacy department" and was yet to be registered as a student of the institute. He said Hashim had been allotted a temporary room on April 10.