HYDERABAD - Akshay Vishal, a software engineer from Hyderabad, was shot dead by unidentified people in Arkansas in the US, his father said Thursday.

Vishal, 26, was an employee of fraud-hit Satyam Computer Services Limited and was on contract with US company Jet Falcon. His friends informed the family about his death Wednesday.

Vishal's father N. Lakshman Murthy told reporters here that his son was getting into a car when some unidentified persons shot him in the legs in Little Rock, Arkansas, Tuesday.

'He was profusely bleeding and was rushed to a hospital but he succumbed to the injuries,' said Murthy.

The motive behind the killing is not known but Murthy, an official of the state-owned Bharast Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), quoted Vishal's friends as saying that some African Americans shot him after an altercation.

The family plunged into gloom on the festival of Makar Sankranti. Vishal had earlier called to wish them on the occasion.

'He had called us from office and promised to call again after reaching home,' said Murthy.

Vishal, who held a MS degree from Alaska University, had gone to the US four years ago.

Murthy said they were told that it would take a week for the US authorities to send Vishal's body to Hyderabad.

'We want to go there to receive the body but we don't have passports and have requested the state government to arrange passports for us,' he said.

This is the latest in a series of killings of Andhra students and employees in the US. Shashank Pulluru, an MS student at the Middle Tennessee State University, was shot and injured by some African Americans in Tennessee on Nov 15 last year.

Arpana B. Jinaga, 24, a software engineer in EMC Corporation in Seattle, was found murdered in her apartment on Nov 3.

T. Soumya Reddy, 23, who was pursuing MS in electrical engineering at the Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville campus, was found dead in a car near a lake in Chicago in September. Her cousin Vikram Reddy, 27, who was a software engineer in Chicago, was also found shot dead nearby.

Srinivas, a postgraduate medical student from Karimnagar, was found murdered in Pennsylvania last March.

A. Kirankumar and K. Chandrasekhar Reddy, both PhD students, were shot dead by intruders in their apartment at Louisiana University in December 2007.