NRI facing death sentence for 2003 varsity shooting spree

An Indian-American man tried to kill as many people he could in a seven-hour shooting rampage at the Case Reserve Western University in Ohio in 2003, which he had planned for more than a year, prosecutors said as his trial began in a Cleveland court.

One person died in the standoff inside the university's business school and the prosecution maintains that Biswanath Halder, originally from Kolkata and now a naturalised United States citizen, attacked because he believed a student computer lab employee had hacked into a website he designed to provide business assistance to India.

Now 65 years of age, Halder graduated from the school in 1999 with a master's degree in business administration.

"This case is about two things, arrogance and selfishness," Assistant County Prosecutor Rick Bell told the jury in the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court on Monday.

Halder, accused of killing student Norman Wallace and injuring two other persons during the siege on May 9, 2003, has repeatedly said information he considered vital to his own life's work was destroyed.

The defence position is that Halder was trying to protect "mankind" from a cyber criminal.

Halder has been charged with 202 felony counts, including aggravated murder and terrorism and has been accused of 338 various felony counts, but more than 100 were dropped because some witnesses to the shooting spree were unavailable. If convicted, Halder could be sentenced to death.

Halder's indictment on a charge of terrorism is because of a law in Ohio that was adopted to strengthen its ability to prevent and respond to acts of terrorism after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Halder went through a glass door at the business school using a mallet and then put on a helmet and fired upon students and faculty.

He was said to be carrying more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition.

Wallace, a graduate student, fell to a single shot and two others, including a faculty member were injured. Halder had reportedly told his neighbours that the University was going to pay.

"I will kill them all," he is supposed to have said.

The Judge in the presiding case has ruled that Halder could not argue that he was mentaly ill.