Indian who burnt car for insurance claim jailed

MELBOURNE - An Indian man, who claimed to be the victim of racial attack in Australia, was Monday sentenced to eight-month jail after he pleaded guilty to setting his car on fire to claim insurance money.

Jaspreet Singh, 28, purchased a 15-litre can of petrol, poured it over his car, and set the vehicle alight Jan 8. His motive was to claim $11,000 from insurance company, but in the process Singh sustained 30 percent burn injuries, requiring skin grafts and a one-month stay in the hospital, the Melbourbne Magistrate’s Court heard.

When questioned by police after the incident, Singh said he was randomly attacked by four racist Australian men - a story that would capture headlines and tap into community anxieties about racially motivated attacks on Indians.

Singh’s false claim of racial attack came less than a week after 21-year-old Indian accounting graduate Nitin Garg was fatally stabbed outside a restaurant in Melbourne.

Monday, Singh pleaded guilty in the court to setting his Ford sedan alight for financial gain and to making a false report to police, The Australian reported.

Escaping prison for his plea of guilty, Singh was sentenced to an eight-month jail term wholly suspended for two years.

Deputy Chief Magistrate Felicity Broughton said Singh acted with “stupidity and superficiality” and impacted both his family and his community.

“To have these difficulties, and to have you cynically feed into that — effectively racism — is a serious and cynical decision,” Broughton said.

“It was clearly a whole enterprise, a pre-meditated enterprise, that you entered into essentially for money,” she was quoted as saying.

Singh’s lawyer, Paul McClure, said his client had moved to Australia in 2007 with his student wife on a spousal visa. The court heard that at the time of the incident, Singh was in “a dire financial situation”, having made numerous attempts to increase his credit limit.

Broughton said she was satisfied Singh was remorseful and had already experienced an “acceptable level of shame”.