US attorney general mistakenly addresses slain Indian engineer Kuchibhotla as 'Sikh'

US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has erroneously referred to Indian engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla, who was shot dead in a hate crime at a suburban Kansas City bar last year, as a Sikh.

A US Navy veteran was last week awarded three consecutive life sentences on federal hate crime charges for killing Kuchibhotla and wounding two others at a suburban Kansas City bar last year.

Adam Purinton of Olathe shot and killed 32-year-old Kuchibhotla, and wounded two others Indian national Alok Madasani and Kansas resident Ian Grillot at Austins Bar & Grill in Olathe, Kansas, in February 2017.

Sessions, America's top law enforcement official said this while addressing the Alliance Defending Freedom's Summit on Religious Liberty on August 8, a day after Purinton was awarded three consecutive life sentences.

"Yesterday, we obtained a life sentence for a man who murdered an Indian-American man, a Sikh as it turned out, because he thought he was a Muslim," Sessions said in his remarks at the summit.

"This is the kind of horrible things we do not need to allow in this country," Sessions added in his speech, the video of which is available online.

While Sessions did not name Kuchibhotla, the reference was to the August 7 sentencing of Purinton when he was handed down three consecutive life terms for killing the Hyderabad native.

The mistake of wrongly identifying Kuchibhotla as a Sikh was pointed out by PTI here to the Department of Justice's Office of Public Affairs.

Later, an official from the public affairs office, responding to PTI's email seeking comment on the error, said that an updated speech has been uploaded on the Department of Justice's website. In the updated version of Sessions' remarks, the error has been rectified.

The updated version of Sessions' remarks removed the Sikh reference and now states that "yesterday, we obtained a life sentence for a man who murdered an Indian-American man because he thought he was Muslim."
It mentions at the end of the remarks that "The original version of this speech mistakenly identified the victim of a hate crime as Sikh."
Purinton poked Kuchibhotla in the chest, called him a "terrorist" and an epithet disparaging persons of Middle Eastern descent, and shouted, "Get out of my country!"
Aiming at Kuchibhotla and Madasani, Purinton had fired eight rounds from his semi-automatic pistol, at least four of which struck Kuchibhotla, who died from his injuries, and one of which struck Madasani, who was injured. Hours after the shooting, Purinton stated over the phone to a friend, and later in person to a bartender, that he had just killed some "Iranians."