K Seshadri Rao

Bhubaneswar, April 21: An Indian youth from Odisha who had gone to study business management in Boston was found shot dead near his university campus on Thursday.

K. Seshadri Rao, a 24-year-old management student from Koraput district, was shot dead on April 19, according to police. He was a student at Boston University’s Graduate School of Management.

Boston police and Boston University officials are awaiting autopsy results, sources said.

The police said they got a call at 3am on April 19 about a body lying in front of a house nearly a mile from the campus in Brighton. The shooting occurred in a residential area just off the Commonwealth Avenue, according to Boston police.

When the police reached the spot, the victim was getting medical assistance from the fire department as he was suffering from severe head trauma. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

No arrests have been made yet.

Chief minister Naveen Patnaik today spoke to external affairs minister S.M. Krishna, who is now in Madrid, Spain, and Indian ambassador to the US Nirupama Rao about the matter. Both of them assured Naveen that they had taken serious note of the matter. Rao said an officer of the Indian consulate in New York had been sent to Boston and that the consulate would send the boy’s body to India shortly. “This is a barbaric and savage act,” Naveen said.

K. Sudhakar Rao, father of the victim, said his son had paid the price for excelling in class. “My son paid the price for doing extraordinarily well in class. He was murdered by a rival group in Boston,” said the bereaved father, who said he had spoken to his son on Thursday morning.

“He told his mother that he was fine and needed a little more money to arrange for a house for himself,” said Sudhakar, who works as a senior manager in a public sector bank at Jeypore in Koraput town, about 550km from here.

Sudhakar said the Indian Embassy had confirmed his son’s death at 1.30am on Thursday.

“However, I got the first call from Aditya, my son’s friend,” he said.

In his mail, Boston University dean of students Kenneth Elmore said: “We don’t have a great deal of information to share with you since the police are still actively investigating this matter. The Boston Police Department is leading the investigation (not the Boston University police) since this incident occurred near your son’s off campus apartment in Allston and not on the Boston University campus.”

The website of the Boston University said: “Boston police found the body of a Graduate School of Management student lying on the road in front of the house, about a mile from the campus. The victim had been shot in the head and leg, and was pronounced dead at the scene. No arrests have been made in the case, which is being investigated by the Boston Police Department and the Boston University Police Department.”

The junior Rao was enrolled in a mathematical finance (treasury management) course in Boston University’s Graduate School of Management. “I had arranged for all the money for his studies. He too had saved around Rs 2 lakh from his short stint of service at Bhubaneswar and Mumbai before leaving for the US in August 2011,” said Sudhakar.

Rao recalled how he had told his son to study hard. “I had told him that we belonged to a middle class family and that he should excel in his studies so that no financial problem cropped up in the future. He took my advice and was very serious about his studies.”

For his performance in the first semester, Seshadri had got a monetary award. “Maybe this made his American batchmates jealous,” Sudhakar said.

The second semester was to start on May 1 and end on May 10 and Seshadri’s course was supposed to end in December. “My son had told me that there would be a three-month vacation after his semester and he wanted to do an internship. He had got two internship offers. Since his workplace would be quite far away, he had planned to get a house near the place and asked me to send $3,000.”

On Thursday morning, (Wednesday, 11pm US time), Seshadri told his father that he had received the $3,000 and needed another $1,200. Then he apparently went to bed. His father, quoting Seshadri’s friend Aditya, said his son was called out of his apartment that night and shot dead.

The Indian consul general in New York is trying to send Seshadri’s body home with the help of the Telugu Association of North America.

Seshadri had passed his matriculation examination from Jeypore and later completed his Plus Two from Stewart Science College, Cuttack, and did a B.Tech from National Institute of Karnataka in 2009. Later, he joined in the KIIT University here in Bhubaneswar. He moved to Mumbai in December, 2009, and joined a private company as financial analysis before leaving for the US.

Seshadri’s younger brother, who is a student of National Institute of Science Education and Research in Bhubaneswar, has postponed his plan to go to Germany after the family received the news of his brother’s death.