The Los Angeles police on Thursday said Mainak Sarkar, an Indian American, had gunned down his professor William Klug at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Sarkar (38), a former doctoral student, committed suicide after killing Klug (39) on Wednesday. He had accused Klug with stealing his computer code and sharing it with others, police said.
The Los Angeles Times said Sarkar, an alumni of IIT-Kharagpur, had earlier called Klug a “very sick person” who should not be trusted. Klug was an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and had been the target of Sarkar’s anger on social media for months, the paper added.
Before enrolling at UCLA, Sarkar earned a master’s degree at Stanford University, according to his LinkedIn page.
In 2000, he graduated in Aerospace Engineering from IIT-Kharagpur. As a research assistant at University of Texas, he worked as a software developer. After UCLA, Sarkar worked as an analyst for Ohio-based rubber firm Endurica LLC until August 2014.
Strangely, in his doctoral dissertation submitted in 2013, Sarkar had expressed his gratitude to Klug for his help and support, the paper said. “Thank you for being my mentor,” he wrote.
But his view of the prof changed. “William Klug, UCLA professor, is not the kind of person when you think of a professor. He is a very sick person. I urge every new student coming to UCLA to stay away from this guy. He made me really sick. Your enemy is my enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm,” Mainak Sarkar wrote.