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 got a degree in commerce in Hyderabad, the large and bustling tech and pharmaceutical hub that is the state capital.
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Akram then moved to Australia in November 1998 to find work and married a woman described as of European origin, with whom he had a son and a daughter.
He went back to India six times for family-related reasons such as property matters and to visit his parents but did not return when his father died, the police statement said.
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It said Akram’s family seemed unaware of his “radicalisation” and it appeared unconnected with India, where police had no “adverse record” of him before he left in 1998.
“The family members have expressed no knowledge of his radical mindset or activities, nor of the circumstances that led to his radicalisation,” the statement said.