An Indian-origin man died after being assaulted in downtown Washington. 41-year-old Vivek Chander Taneja died after allegedly being hit on the head during an altercation outside a restaurant. He worked as an executive in Virginia.
Officers responded to reports of an assault, and arrived on the scene to find Taneja with critical injuries. They rushed him to a hospital, but he did not survive. Taneja’s death was ruled a ‘homicide’ by police.
No arrests have been made yet. However, a CCTV camera did capture the suspect. The Metropolitan Police Department’s Homicide Branch is seeking the public’s help in identifying and locating the person responsible for killing Taneja.
Taneja was the president and co-founder of Dynamo Technologies. He was a premier technology and solutions analytics provider for the federal government, a company spokesperson said, according to NBC Washington. Taneja graduated of the University of Virginia, George Mason University and George Washington University.
A reward of up to $25,000 is being offered by police to anyone who can provide information that leads to arrest of suspect(s) involved in each homicide committed in the District of Columbia.
Anyone who has information on Taneja’s case has been urged to call the police on 202-727-9099. One can also submitted anonymous information to the department’s TEXT TIP LINE by sending a text message to 50411.
Several other Indian-origin persons have died in the US this year, most of them being students.Vivek Saini, an MBA student in Georgia’s Lithonia, was brutally attacked and killed by a homeless man named Julian Faulkner. The gut-wrenching incident was caught on camera.
Indian-American student Akul Dhawan was found dead outside the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in January. His father later criticised the police for inaction. The initial findings of the autopsy suggested he died from hypothermia, according to the Champaign County Coroner.
Neel Acharya, a student of Purdue Universityin West Lafayette, Indiana, who went missing days ago, was later found dead on the Purdue campus. An autopsy conducted on January 29 revealed that there were no signs of trauma on his body.
Indian-origin doctoral student Sameer Kamath, who studied at Purdue too, was found dead at a nature preserve this week. The 23-year-old reportedly died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
