Indian student shot at in Chicago

New York: A 30-year-old Indian national pursuing his masters in Chicago has been seriously injured after he was shot in his right cheek by an unidentified assailant, according to media reports.

Mohammad Akbar was seriously wounded in the shooting on December 6 in the Albany Park neighbourhood in Chicago, according to reports and information provided by his family in India.

Around 8:45 am on Wednesday someone walked up to him and fired shots, Chicago Police was quoted as saying by the Chicago Tribune.

He was shot in the cheek and taken in serious condition to Illinois Masonic Medical Center, police said.

The county police has started investigating the attack and is trying to trace the alleged assailants.

Chicago police said they were not treating the attack as hate crime. Nobody has been arrested yet.

Akbar, who hails from Hyderabad, is studying for his postgraduate degree in computer systems networking and telecommunications at DeVry University in the US city, his family has said.

He has been in Chicago for the past three years and currently staying in a flat on Whipple Street.

The shooting comes amidst growing attacks on Indians and Americans of Indian descent in recent months.

Srinivas Kuchibhotla, a software engineer from India, was fatally shot in Olathe, Kansas, in February by a US navy veteran who had told him and his friend at a bar to go back to their country.

Weeks later, a Sikh man was shot in his arm in his driveway in Kent, Washington state, by a masked man who had told him go back to his "own country".