Melbourne: Australia on Monday named an Indian-Australian as its new envoy to New Delhi, as a fresh case of a brutal attack on an Indian student here surfaced.
Peter Varghese, Australia's intelligence chief and a close aide of Premier Kevin Rudd, was nominated as the new High Commissioner to India.
Varghese, the current head of the Office of National Assessments (ONA), will take over in August from John McCarthy, who has served in the job since 2004.
The announcement comes the house of an Indian was attacked in Harris Park, Sydney where some Lebanese men beat Indians inside the house, according to reports.
As the news spread, about 1000 Indians started protesting in Harris Park against the attack.
Earlier, a 23-year-old Indian student Kamal Jit was beaten up for the second time in a fortnight by a group of youths in Melbourne, the 11th person from the community to be assaulted within a space of a month in Australia.
Jit was found unconscious and bleeding by another Indian student in western suburb of the city on Sunday.
"It is very bad because we pay a lot of money and we are living far away from our country and from our families and we are without protection," Jit was quoted as saying in 'The Age' newspaper.
The announcement comes at a sensitive time in bilateral relations, with the billion dollar foreign student market under threat due to spate of attacks on Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney. More than 80,000 Indians are currently studying in Australia.