An Australian court on Tuesday sentenced a 20-year-old youth to three years in youth detention for stabbing an Indian student in Melbourne last year. Victorian Court Judge Duncan Allen sentenced Jesse James Donnachie to three years in a youth justice centre, saying, "You were in all probability significantly affected by psychotic symptoms at the time" of attack.
Donnachie was affected by a psychotic episode when he and another man stabbed Baljinder Singh near a railway station in the Melbourne suburb of Carnegie on May 25, 2009, the Herald Sun reported. During the attack, Donnachie, who was armed with a knife, demanded money from Singh and then stabbed him.
Judge Allen said admissions Donnachie made to his friends following the attack showed "no remorse and no insight into what you had done".
The day after the attack on Singh, Donnachie was involved in another knife attack on a man in Malvern, the court heard. The attack came at the same time as a number of other attacks on Indian nationals in Melbourne that led to protests.
In June 2009, nearly 2000 people protested in central Melbourne against violence committed on Indian students including the attack on Singh, the paper said.
The protest also highlighted violence against five Indian students who were attacked after two teenagers gate-crashed a party. One of the victims spent days in intensive care. Over 100 incidents of attacks on Indians come to light since May last year in Australia.
Nitin Garg, 21, who was stabbed to death in Melbourne, was the first victim of such assaults this year. Donnachie, who has been in custody since May last year, was also ordered to serve three years in a youth justice centre for the second attack.
His time in detention for both attacks will be served concurrently.
