Purdue University is a premier American university located in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA. Just in the last few days, there has been news of an Indian-American student, Varun Manish Chheda, 20, being stabbed to death there. Mitch Daniels, the university’s president, put out a press release saying that the suspect was the victim’s roommate and has been arrested.

The suspect, whose name, Ji Min Sha, 22, and whose photo the local police have now released, is supposed to be an international student from Korea. He publicly said that he loves his family just before being sent to jail. Like Indian students, Korean students too do not want to bring disgrace to their families in a foreign land, especially the United States.

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Police have ascribed the death to multiple front-face trauma, most probably caused by a knife. They have not described the state of the room. It takes a lot to kill a man. The police have not said if the walls are blood-splattered or clean. They have also not said if adjoining rooms heard any screams or cries.

American dorm rooms are like shoe closets bunched up next to one another. It’s hard to believe that the victim’s cries did not penetrate his walls, not just to his neighbouring rooms, but down the hall as well, bringing forth a torrent of students to check out what was going on.

Police also say that they have not found the weapon used in the murder nor do they have any motive for the murder. The victim was a straight-A student who went to private schools all his life and had won multiple awards in state olympiad contests and the like. The victim needn’t have gone to Purdue. He could have gone to better universities like MIT or Caltech but chose Purdue, apparently for family reasons.

Private school tuition in the US can run around $50,000 a year. Not many can afford it. But the victim’s parents seemed hell-bent on giving their son the best education possible. But it is not just a question of money here. A hard-working Indian immigrant family has just lost the chiraag (flame) of their lives. They deserve justice.

Justice does not seem to be on the mind of Mitch Daniels or his cops. Daniels is a former governor of Indiana, who after 10 years at the helm of Purdue, is seeking to stand for the job of governor once again. He seems determined to bury the possibility of a serial killer on the loose at Purdue. Just about a month ago, a Chinese student, Minxi Yang, 30, was found dead in a pond on the campus. No killer or motive has been identified. The police took a long time to identify the victim. But the victim was a researcher whose labmates could have easily said he was missing from the lab. It was as if the Chinese were an alien who could not be identified easily. Death has been ascribed to natural causes. People don’t go to a pond to die of natural causes.

It is not even clear if there was water in the lungs of the victim. If there was, he might have drowned, but if there was not, his body was probably dumped in the pond. Nothing further has come out of any investigation. It is not even clear if there is any ongoing investigation in the case. In the Indian-Korean imbroglio, it seems certain that the families would get involved with lawyers, etc.

But the legal process must be backed by sound police work. The local police are just not equipped for the task. They seem intent on burying the possibility of a serial killer at large. Daniels too seems determined not to make waves of the wrong kind so as to protect his political career. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Indian students attend Purdue every year. Before parents send their wards to this university, it must be clarified what is going on there.

After there are hundreds of other American universities, and none of them is making such news. Parents must pressurize the university administration directly and through Indian diplomats in the US to come clean about what is happening at Purdue before they send their children to study there. Children go to university to study and not to get murdered in the prime of their lives.