Indian beaten up in Sydney

The man, who refused to be named apparently due to safety reasons, said that he was kicked and punched by the group near Coogee beach on Monday.

He said he had been living in Australia for the past 11 years and had never experienced such a thing before.

Police arrived 40 minutes after the incident and caught one person, he said. While the man did not receive any external wounds, he said he was having severe pain in his neck, back and head. He did not give any other detail. However, police have not issued any statement on the attack.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said that India and Australia shared an "excellent relationship" and did not want the issue of attacks on Indians, mostly students, here to disturb the ties.

Smith said he rang up his Indian counterpart S M Krishna on Monday after returning from holidays to brief him about the investigations.

"We both agreed this was an issue we did not want to disturb or get in the way of what the External Affairs Minister (Krishna) described as an excellent relationship," he was quoted as saying by AAP on Tuesday.

"I undertook to keep him (Krishna) informed of any developments in the investigation. I relayed to him personal condolences on the death of the Indian student (Nitin) Garg and ... to Garg's family," Smith said.

He said he told Krishna that the Victorian police continued to treat the case as one of "its highest priorities" and outlined the steps that had been taken by authorities in terms of community policing.

Garg, a 21-year-old student, was stabbed to death by unidentified assailants earlier this month while he was walking towards a restaurant, where he worked part-time.
"Minister Krishna and I agreed India and Australia have an excellent relationship following on the Prime Minister's (Kevin Rudd's) visit last year to India, when we increased the level of our relationship to a strategic partnership. We agreed we have an excellent relationship," Smith said.