MELBOURNE: An Indian student in this Australian city shuddered as he recalled the November night he was viciously stabbed in the stomach, with 26 stitches needed to sew up the gaping wound.
The cookery student in Melbourne was stabbed in the stomach by two men after he had finished work in a South Yarra bar.
The 31-year-old, who was not named, now has a 26-stitch scar where doctors performed emergency surgery on his punctured bowel after the Nov 5 attack, AAP reported.
Recalling the sequence of events, the Indian student said two men approached him in Lovers Walk South around 11.10 p.m. while he was walking to a railway station.
The duo accosted him and demanded money.
When he said he had none, "one punched me in the stomach, scolded me and said dirty words".
"I collected some courage and ran away," the victim was quoted as saying.
It was only after he reached South Yarra rail station that he realised that he was bleeding profusely as he had been stabbed.
He hailed a taxi and went to the Alfred Hospital where he was immediately operated on.
The Indian victim had been in Australia for two years and he recuperated in the hospital for 10 days after the attack. Only then did he inform his parents in India.
Emma Frankcom, a police official, told reporters: "It was a very callous attack, and we want these two men off the streets."
The attack did not appear to be racially motivated, she said, adding: "It appears to be a random attack."
Indian students in Australia have faced a string of assaults here as well as in Sydney. Indian student Nitin Garg was fatally stabbed in Melbourne in January this year, causing an uproar in India.
At least two dozen attacks on Indian students have taken place in Melbourne and Sydney over the past two years.