Victorian Police Declines to Release Statistics on Attacks on Indians

Though admitting the statistics of the attacks on Indians in Australia as ‘problematic’, Victorian police chief Simon Overland has declined to release the details citing it can be ‘misinterpreted’, said media reports.

He declined to release the statistics on the grounds that they are ‘subjective and open to interpretation’, said reports.

Overland said that information regarding victim’s race was on the basis of a subjective assessment of their appearance – and Indians were classed in the broad category of ‘south Asian appearance’, said report.

He said that this category could also include persons from countries other than India such as Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, report said.

“The problem with putting the data out there is that it will be misunderstood and we see this all the time,” he was quoted as saying in the ‘The Age’ newspaper today.

Earlier, he had remarked that Indians were over-represented as victims of robberies which was different than Victorian premier John Brumby who said ‘assaults on Indian students are under-represented in terms of population share’.

Overland said that his comments were based on police intelligence which relied on data that was ‘problematic’.

(Based on internet reports)