New Delhi, March 5: A masked gunman shot at a Sikh man in his driveway in Washington state on Friday evening after allegedly shouting "go back to your own country", escalating fears within the Indian American community that has been grappling with rising insecurity since Donald Trump's presidential victory.

The 39-year-old victim, Deep Rai, survived and was treated at a hospital in the town of Kent, 40km south of Seattle.

The incident bears stark parallels with the killing of 32-year-old Indian engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla on February 22 in a Kansas bar-cum-grill. On Thursday, an Indian-origin storeowner was shot dead but no evidence has surfaced so far to suggest it was a hate crime.

The FBI, which is investigating Kuchibhotla's shooting as a hate crime, said in a statement that it was also probing the Washington shooting similarly.

Witnesses to the Kansas attack have said the alleged gunman, Adam Purinton, had yelled at Kuchibhotla to "get out of my country" before firing. But unlike Purinton, arrested from another bar, Rai's attacker remains untraced.

The attacks lengthen the list of race-related crimes targeting Muslims, Jewish places of worship and cemeteries, and people of Indian-origin mistaken as Arabs. Trump, during his election campaign, had peppered his speeches with rhetoric targeting immigrant communities.

Trump had not immediately reacted to the Washington attack even though Rai is an American citizen. Although Trump did eventually condemn the Kansas shooting during his address to the US Congress last Monday, immigrant rights groups remain unconvinced about his administration's commitment to cracking down on hate crimes.

"While we appreciate the efforts of state and local officials in responding to attacks like this, we need our national leaders to make hate crime prevention a top priority," Rajdeep Singh, interim programme manager at the Sikh Coalition, the largest rights group of the community in the US, said from New York.

"Tone matters in our political discourse because this is a matter of life or death for millions of Americans who are worried about losing loved ones to hate."

The American Sikh Council said in a statement: "Some people seem to have been emboldened by the pomposity of the current leadership within the country combined with the issue of immigration. This corrosive mix needs to be nipped in the bud before it turns into an inferno across our nation."

It added: "It is imperative that our President takes immediate action and vociferously speaks out against all forms of hate, bias, racism...."

MaryKay Loss Carlson, charge d'affaires at the US embassy in New Delhi, invoked Trump's address to Congress. "Wishing for a full and speedy recovery," Carlson tweeted. "As POTUS (President of the US) said, we condemn hate and evil in all its forms." Kent police chief Ken Thomas said Rai had told investigators he was cleaning his car outside his house when a six-foot-tall man approached him.

The man, who was wearing a mask covering the lower part of his face, abused Rai and asked him what he was doing, Thomas said. Following an altercation - during which the attacker told Rai to "go back to your own country" - he wrestled the Indian American to the ground, knocking him unconscious.

Rai has told the police that it was only when he regained consciousness that he realised he had been shot in the arm. It is unclear whether the attacker presumed the unconscious Rai dead.

"I can tell you we are early on in our investigation, and the shot resulted in non-life-threatening injuries," Thomas said in the briefing. "However, we are treating this as a very serious incident." Foreign minister Sushma Swaraj said she had spoken with Rai's father, Harpal Singh. She said she was "sorry to hear about the attack" on Rai.

The attack on Rai comes at a time of rising uneasiness within the Indian American community - over the future of their jobs, the respect they have earned, and their lives.

An Indian man from Telangana, Vamsi Chander Reddy Mamidala, was shot dead during a carjacking in California in early February. A Gujarati American man, Harnish Patel, was killed on Thursday night in South Carolina. Police do not so far suspect these attacks to be hate crimes.