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Bondi beach shooting: Philippines authorities say Sajid Akram was Indian national
15 people were killed and another 42 were injured when Sajid Akram and his son Naveed Akram, 24, opened fire with rifles on a Hanukkah event at Bondi Beach
NEW DELHI: Sajid Akram, the 50-year-old killed during a terror attack on a Jewish gathering in Australia, was an Indian national, the Philippines’ Bureau of Immigration said on Tuesday, with the Telangana police confirming shortly after that he was from Hyderabad, migrated to Australia in 1998, but carries an Indian passport.
The Philippines’ Bureau of Immigration also said that Akram visited the country in November.
Fifteen people were killed and another 42 were injured when Sajid Akram and his son Naveed Akram, 24, opened fire with rifles on a Hanukkah event at Bondi Beach in Sydney on Sunday. Naveed Akram is in hospital under police guard while Sajid Akram was shot dead in an exchange of fire with police.
Dana Sandoval, a spokesperson for the Philippines’ Bureau of Immigration, said: “Sajid Akram, 50, Indian national (Australian resident), and Naveed Akram, 24, Australian national, arrived in the Philippines together last November 1, 2025 from Sydney, Australia.”
She added, “Both reported Davao as their final destination. They left the country on November 28, 2025 on a connecting flight from Davao to Manila, with Sydney as their final destination.”
Sajid Akram’s Indian origin was earlier confirmed by five people familiar with the matter on condition of anonymity. There was no word on the matter from Indian government officials.
Hours after the statement from the Philippine authorities, Telangana Police said in a statement that Sajid Akram was from Hyderabad, where he got his BCom degree, and had migrated to Australia in November 1998. He married a European-origin woman in Australia and they had a son and a daughter, who are Australian citizens.
“Sajid Akram carries [an] Indian passport as on date,” the statement said, adding that his relatives in India stated he had limited contact with them over the past 27 years. After migrating to Australia, he visited India on six occasions for “property-related matters” and to meet his elderly parents.
However, Sajid Akram didn’t travel to India at the time of his father’s death, and his family members said they had “no knowledge of his radical mindset or activities, nor of the circumstances that led to his radicalisation”, according to the statement.
“The factors that led to the radicalisation of Sajid Akram and his son Naveed appear to have no connection with India or any local influence in Telangana,” the statement said.
Australian home minister Tony Burke referred to the father-and-son duo at a news conference on Monday and said the father arrived in the country in 1998 on a student visa.
The father transferred to a partner visa in 2001 and “after each trip overseas since then has been on resident return visas, which has occurred three times”.
Resident return visas are issued to Australian permanent residents and allows them to travel in and out of the country as many times as they want until the validity expires, while retaining permanent residence status.
Australian foreign minister Penny Wong spoke to external affairs minister S Jaishankar on Monday and briefed him on the terrorist attack in Bondi and the ongoing investigation, people familiar with the matter said.
Wong said: “I thanked minister Jaishankar for his condolences and for the Indian government’s messages of support. We agreed that there must be no place for antisemitism, violence and terrorism.”
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Jaishankar said on social media that he spoke to Wong and conveyed “our deepest condolences about the Bondi beach terrorist attack and offered our fullest support”.
Australia’s 9 News channel aired an interview with a former colleague of Naveed Akram, an out of work bricklayer, who said the detained attacker’s “background was Indian and Italian”. The former colleague said Naveed Akram’s mother is Italian and his father Indian.
The former colleague also said Naveed Akram spoke about religion sometimes “but he wasn’t somebody to force things down your throat” and that he had a licence for firearms.
Australian officials said on Tuesday morning both men had travelled to the Philippines last month, and the reason for that trip is being investigated.
Davao is the largest city on the island of Mindanao and is considered the gateway to southern Philippines, which remains a centre of Islamic State activity. In 2017, Islamic State fighters besieged the city of Marawi in Mindanao for five months, and the government launched a massive military operation to root them out.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday that the two attackers were motivated by “Islamic State ideology” and were apparently radicalised by beliefs associated with the terror group.
