Amarnath Ghosh, a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri was shot dead while on an evening walk in the St. Louis Academy neighborhood of the city, reports suggest. Authorities have not yet revealed details about the incident, but the news surfaced after Indian television actress Devoleena Bhattacharjee, who was a friend of Ghosh’s, took to social media site X to share the news and appealed to the Indian government to find out more about the incident.
The Consulate General of India in Chicago also posted on X offering condolences to Ghosh’s family and friends and assuring them that investigations are underway.
According to Ghosh’s personal website, and student profile on the university website, he was an accomplished Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi, Manipuri, and Kathak dancer. Though he studied dance in Chennai, he drew on his Bengali heritage to examine the concepts of race and ethnicity in compositions by Rabindranath Tagore, which was his primary research topic.
This is the latest in a string of deaths of Indian and Indian-American students in the U.S. over the past few months. In 2024 alone, eight students – Akul Dhawan, Sameer Kamath, Shreyas Reddy, Neel Acharya, Vivek Saini, Dinesh Gattu, Sai Rakoti and now Amarnath Ghosh – have lost their lives. Saini and Ghosh were murdered; Kamath and Reddy died by suicide; Gattu and Rakoti died of accidental overdoses involving fentanyl; and Acharya and Dhawan were found dead after going missing from their college campuses. Â
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