Indian-American family target of hate crime in New Jersey

Washington, June 4 (UNI) A large number of Indian-Americans have rallied around to support a Hindu family in Wayne in New Jersey which has allegedly become a victim of a new wave of hate crimes.

The house of the family, which reportedly started receiving a steady stream of hate mails since January, was vandalised last Saturday with spray paint and the police had registered a case.

According to New Jersey media reports, the family arrived home in Wayne last Saturday to find the house and walkways spray-painted with anti-Indian and anti-Hindu epithets. The reports said that a neighbour found two people in the victim family's backyard and when she saw the fluorescent paint she got suspicious and called the police.

Police disclosed the incident on Wednesday and said the family had been targeted with hate mail and graffiti since January.

The spray paint allegedly bore dire warnings like ''We kill you.

We will fire your house. Watch yourkKids. We hate Indians''.

Other profanities spray-painted on their two-story house in black, orange and green have terrorised the Wayne family of five, comprising a husband and wife and their three children, two boys of 16 and 11 and a girl of 13 who police say have been singled out for their Hindu beliefs and Asian Indian roots. The family is so frightened that they did not want the media to give out their names and identity.

Police and the neighbours say they were stunned when they saw the painted words, including ''I Hate Indians'' and others ''targeting Hindus that were too vulgar to print''.

Wayne is a residential area in Bergen County, which is very close New York City. The Wayne couple moved to Bergen when they bought their house in November last year. The husband is a 42-year-old businessman who was born and raised in Tanzania. He moved to Passaic County with his brother and father when he was 17 and married to a girl from Mumbai in 1988.

Since settling down in Wayne, the couple say, according to media reports, that they have had no problems with the neighbors and that most had been friendly. The couple has a small ''Pooja room'' in their house where they offer prayers daily.

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