Oz attacks remind youth of his London horror

Indians have of late been the target of racist attacks in Australia, with a 25-year-old student battling for life after a brutal assault.
But for Shireesh Johari, the attacks Down Under bring back bitter memories of a similar incident in London last month, when he was attacked with a belt and beer bottles, costing him his right eye.

The 26-year-old Nagpur boy, an alumnus of IIT-Kharagpur and IIM-Bangalore, joined JP Morgan Chase as a financial analyst in July last year. On April 6, 2009, around 8.30 pm, Shireesh was walking past a group of teenagers-both black and white youths-at Canary Wharf in London, when they began throwing stones at him. "I turned around and asked them to stop it. They then surrounded me and started beating me up. There were about 15 of them. They punched me and hit me with a belt and also attacked me with broken beer bottles. The whole incident lasted for only a couple of minutes, but that was enough to cost me an eye," Shireesh said.

After the assault, he managed to drag himself to a nearby shop where some customers called the police. He was taken to Moorfields Hospital, where the doctors performed a surgery on his right eye as it had burst open after the attack. "Though they managed to sew up my eye, they found that something had penetrated as far as the retina, which had detached itself. They said it was impossible to restore vision in the eye. My left eye was bruised and red," he added.

Shireesh informed his mother of the incident three days later. "My mother was a reader at Nagpur University. She had an interview for a professor's post on April 9 and I didn't want to upset her before that, said Shireesh. So she learnt about it the same day she made it to the post.

Shireesh returned to India on May 8 and sought the opinion of some the best hospitals in the country, including Shankar Netralaya in Chennai. "I was told that the operation to restore vision in my right eye was very risky. If the surgery was unsuccessful, my eye would shrink and turn into a deformity. Since the risks outweigh the benefits, I decided against it," he said.

Despite the ordeal, Shireesh plans to return to London and resume his job on June 10. He added JP Morgan was very considerate and helped him with his insurance papers as well as other documents. "They have granted me as much sick leave as I needed and assured me that I would not lose my job."

Shireesh, however, was bitter about the police in London. "They took over a week to get hold of the CCTV grabs of the incident and are yet to make any arrests. I even wrote to the Indian High Commission in the UK about the incident, but got no reply," the youth says.

To date, Shireesh has no idea why he was attacked. Incidentally, the shop that he had run into was vandalised a few days after the incident.