Melbourne:
A candlelight vigil was held in Melbourne on Monday night for an Indian student who was stabbed to death at the weekend.
21-year-old Nitin Garg was stabbed on his way to work for a night shift at a Hungry Jacks fast food restaurant in the west of the city in the state of Victoria.
But Australian authorities insist there is still no evidence that the attack was racially motivated, claiming that the country is a safe place for international students and migrants.
On Monday night, people laid flowers and candles, and carried signs reading "Indian Students Welcome Here".
Australian Acting Foreign Minister Simon Crean said on Tuesday that there was still no suggestion that Garg's attack was racially motivated.
"It is an unfortunate, very unfortunate circumstance, but the police have continued to re-affirm the fact that there is no evidence that this is a racially-based attack," Crean told reporters in Melbourne. He added that the incident was one of several stabbings that took place in Melbourne over the Christmas period, and emphasised that such attacks can happen anywhere.
"It also happens in Delhi, it happens in Mumbai, and it is the responsibility of all law enforcement authorities to get on top of those issues," Crean said.
The stabbing has caused outrage in India, following a number of attacks on Indian students in Australia in 2009.
But Australian Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard insisted international students from India and elsewhere should feel welcome and secure in the country.
"Australia is overwhelmingly a safe place, we have very low homicide rates compared with other nations around the world, but our sympathies obviously go to the family of the young man who died in Melbourne in this dreadful incident," she told reporters in Adelaide.
Last year, reports that Indian students in Australia were targeted in violent attacks prompted senior government officials to discuss the issue with authorities in New Delhi, including Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Australian police say that while some attacks on Indians are racially motivated, many are ordinary crimes.
They say Indian students are vulnerable because they often travel alone late at night to part-time jobs or from universities carrying valuables such as laptop computers.
Some 97-thousand Indians are among more than half a (m) million foreigners studying in Australia, an industry worth almost 12 (b) billion Australian dollars (10,8 (b) billion US dollars) a year.
India strongly condemned the fatal stabbing on Monday and said the incident could affect bilateral ties between the countries.