A 24-year-old native of Kurukshetra in Haryana who was deported from Australia after pleading guilty to assaults on Sikhs in Sydney received a hero’s welcome on reaching home on Sunday.
After Vishal Jood was deported on Saturday, Australia’s minister for immigration, citizenship, migrant services and multicultural affairs, Alex Hawke, tweeted: “Attempts to undermine Australia’s social cohesion will not be tolerated. I thank community leaders who have worked to build cross-community unity and resilience against attempts by a small minority to incite discord and disharmony, demonstrating the importance and benefit of our nation’s strong social cohesion.”
Back home, a road show was organised for Jood with him standing in an open-top vehicle holding the national flag.
The Right-wing ecosystem shared a video from earlier this year, showing Jood holding the Tricolour among a group of people protesting in Australia against Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the farm laws and the effort to discredit the farmers’ protest. The contention was that Jood was opposing the protesters and he had been framed by Khalistanis.
Sharing a video of the road show, Ashwani Mahajan, co-convener of RSS affiliate Swadeshi Jagran Manch, tweeted: “An Indian student #ViahalJood (sic) who was arrested after being falsely implicated by Khalistanis, was deported. Was given overwhelming welcome in India.”
According to Indian diaspora newspapers in Australia, Jood was arrested by New South Wales police in April after an investigation revealed his alleged connection to a series of targeted attacks on Sikhs.
“A number of charges were levelled against him but in a plea bargain, NSW’s department of public prosecutors dropped eight charges that included racial hate crime, while Jood pleaded guilty to three charges for which he was sentenced to six months in jail,” IndianLink News said.
NRI Affairs, another news portal run by the diaspora, called Jood a “Tiranga warrior” and said he had “pleaded guilty to three of the charges, including ‘assault’, ‘occasioning actual bodily harm in company of others’ and ‘armed with intention to commit indictable offence’, while the other charges were dropped by the Crown”.
Jood became eligible for parole on October 15 after completing six months in jail, and was deported from Australia on the first flight out.
In June, Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar had sought the intervention of external affairs minister S. Jaishankar for Jood’s release.
Khattar had described Jood as innocent and alleged he had been arrested as part of a conspiracy by anti-national forces.
Khattar had sought Jaishankar’s intervention following protests by Rors – the community Jood belongs to – seeking his return.
