Sunayana Dumala, the wife of Indian engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla who was shot dead in Kansas on February 22, has appealed to the heads of tech giants, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Facebook Founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, “to keep advocating support for human rights”. “We need to spread love and stop this hatred...I need all your support to pass this strong message of spreading love and giving confidence to every foreign national that their fight will be heard,” she said.

Dumala has repeatedly questioned the safety of immigrants in the United States after her husband was shot dead in a hate crime last week. “Do we belong here? Is this the same country we dreamed of and is it still secure to raise our families and children here?” she said in a Facebook post on Tuesday. “...The fight must go on towards eradicating hatred from the minds of people.”

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In a Facebook post that went viral on Wednesday, Dumala expressed her anguish over losing her husband and their now unfulfilled dreams. The post went into detail about her life with her husband. In it, she also said that Kuchibhotla had believed Narendra Modi was “the leader that could make India shine and was “very proud” of Sushma Swaraj’s work as the external affairs minister. She also appealed to the Indian film industry, saying, “I need all your support to pass this strong message of spreading love and giving confidence to every foreign national that their fight will be listened to.”

There had been reports that she was facing trouble with her visa, but Dumala said she will return to the US now. She thanked Senator Jerry Moran and Congressman Kevin Yoder for helping her with her migration status. Kuchibhotla had been living in the US on an H-1B visa, while Dumala was there on an H4 dependent visa.

The White House on Tuesday had called the Kansas shooting an “act of racially motivated hatred” after the Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed that it was hate crime. Eyewitnesses had heard the assailant shout “Get out of my country” before he started shooting at the men, who he had believed were Arabs.

Kuchibhotla was shot dead at a Kansas City bar on February 22 by a Navy veteran, Adam Purinton. His friends Alok Madasani and Ian Grillot were also shot at by Puriton. Kuchibhotla was cremated in Hyderabad on Tuesday evening.