The alleged gunman shot dead by police during Sunday’s attack on Australia’s Bondi Beach was originally from the southern Indian city of Hyderabad and his family did not know about his “radical mindset”, Indian police said on Tuesday.
Fifteen people were killed in the attack on a Hanukkah event, Australia’s worst mass shooting in nearly 30 years, and it is being investigated as an act of terrorism targeting the Jewish community.
In a statement providing more details about the man alleged to have carried out the attack with his son as an accomplice, police in the southern Indian state of Telangana said Sajid Akram, 50, had obtained a degree in commerce in Hyderabad, the large and bustling tech and pharma hub that is the state capital.
When Reuters on Tuesday visited “Zehra Cottage”, Akram’s family home in the Al Hasnath colony of Hyderabad’s Tolichowki area, a middle-class Muslim neighbourhood, the three-storey building’s gates were shut. No family members were to be seen.
Most neighbours were unwilling to speak to reporters. One neighbour said a doctor lived in the house, referring to Akram’s brother. His elderly mother also stays with them, he said.
“We heard he (the brother) is a doctor,” said the neighbour, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“This is a silent and peaceful colony. We have never interacted with them or the family. No one in the colony has any criminal history or has attracted police attention before.”
Australian police said Akram and his 24-year-old son Naveed, who was identified by Australian media as his alleged accomplice and is in critical condition in hospital after also being shot, had travelled to the Philippines last month.