A 32-year-old Indian-American doctor has been shot dead under mysterious circumstances in a car in the US state of Michigan.
Ramesh Kumar, who worked in the Urology Department of the Henry Ford Hospital, was found dead on the passenger seat of a car in a rest area some 145 km out of Detroit on 4 May.
Police are investigating the case to ascertain the cause of his death.
Members of his family say they do not suspect anyone and have ruled out the possibility of it being an incident of hate crime.
"We do not know (the reason for his murder). They (the police) are yet to find out (the reason)," his father Narendra Kumar, a former president of the influential American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), said.
"We do not suspect anything. We do not think it was a hate crime," he said.
Ramesh Kumar was a graduate of the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences in Kochi.
When he did not show up for work, a hospital doctor called his father to inquire about him. "This was quite unusual," Narendra Kumar said.
He said he made several phone calls and sent several text messages to his son but there was no response.
The father went to his son's apartment and called the police when he did not find him there. After hours of search, police found Ramesh Kumar’s body in the car.
The police have refrained from making any comments about the incident.
There has been a surge in hate crimes against the Hindu and Sikh communities in the US after Donald Trump became President.
On 5 May, a Sikh man was stabbed in California in a suspected hate crime.
Indian engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla was killed in February when a US Navy veteran, Adam Purinton, opened fire at him and his friend Alok Madasani before yelling "get out of my country.
In Florida, an Indian-American family's store was almost burnt to the ground while many others have been harassed and threatened across the country.
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