A friend holds a picture of Nitesh during a meeting with a prosecutor in St. Petersburg. (AFP)

Bokaro, Sept. 26: Two teenagers of St Petersburg, Russia, apparently belonging to a neo-Nazi group, have been arrested for the murder of Nitesh Kumar Singh.

The arrest was made on the basis of a description given by a woman who saw them stabbing the 27-year-old Bokaro boy, a final-year student of St Petersburg State Mechnikov Medical Academy.

Shitesh, the elder brother of the deceased, said: “Three teenagers, who attacked Nitesh with sharp weapons in front of his hostel were spotted by a woman. She raised an alarm immediately. President Vladimir Putin has announced an investigation into the matter.”

A classmate of Nitesh, also from Bokaro, informed a close aide of the family, A. Kumar of Hazaribagh, who in turn told Shitesh that his brother had gone out alone around 10 pm (St Petersburg time) to fetch bread when he was killed.

Sanjay Kumar, a friend of Nitesh in Bokaro, said the latter had the habit of going for late-night walks alone since high school days.

“Even in Patna, where he used to take his coaching, Nitesh used to go for a stroll alone around 11 pm.”

Nitesh had gone to St Petersburg in 2001 and last visited the steel city in 2004. He was expected again in 2007. There are about seven others from the district studying in the same college, which has more than 4,000 students, including 1,000 foreign students from 50 countries. Among them, 400 are from India.

Rakesh Ranjan, another friend, told Shitesh from St Petersburg that “Skin Heads” a racial neo-Nazi group, was behind the attack, which wanted dark skins, including Indians and Africans, to leave their country or face death.

A doctor posted at Bokaro general hospital, Anshuman, who studied in the same medical college and returned to Bokaro three years ago, said: “The Skin Head group comprised mostly teenagers (of 16 to 24 years of age) who allege the Asians were taking away their money, women and prosperity, and therefore, their country should get rid of them.”

Nitesh’s father Narendra Kumar Singh alleged that the Indian embassy in Russia was not cooperating in getting the body to India.

“They are demanding a bond to incur the expenses of sending the coffin to India, though the Mechnikov Medical Academy principal said Nitesh was insured and the expenses for sending the body to India would be borne by the insurance company,” Singh said.

The family wants the body to be sent to Calcutta from where “we can ferry it to Bokaro quickly”.