A Melbourne man originally from India, Saurabh Anand, 33, went through absolute hell after a group of teenagers attacked him with a machete outside Central Square Shopping Centre in Altona Meadows.
Just a normal evening—he was coming back from the pharmacy, minding his own business, and bam, ambushed around 7:30 pm on July 19.
Out of nowhere, five teens jumped him. He told The Age he was on the phone with a mate and barely saw them coming. Next thing he knew, they’d surrounded him.
One kid went through his pockets, another kept punching him in the head till he hit the ground, and then a third just whipped out a machete and put it to his throat. It got ugly real fast.
“They didn’t stop there,” Anand said. His gut reaction was to raise his arm to protect himself. The machete cut straight through his wrist, then his hand, then right through the bone. Brutal. He ended up with a busted spine, broken arm, cuts and stab wounds all over—shoulder, back, head. He said the pain was unreal, “My hand was… hanging by a thread.”
Bleeding out, he somehow dragged himself outside and started yelling for help. Someone finally heard him and called an ambulance.
He landed in Royal Melbourne Hospital, and the doctors honestly thought they’d have to amputate his hand. Hours of surgery later, they managed to reattach it, but the damage was so bad that he still can’t move it—just feels pain, according to what he told The Age.
Police have picked up four of the teenage suspects so far; one is still on the run. Wildly, a 14-year-old facing charges of intentionally causing serious injury and unlawful assault was released on bail and will be in the children’s court in August.
