Warning: Distressing content and images
Saurabh Anand did not hear a sound as the teenage boys approached him from behind and shoved him to the ground before viciously attacking him as he was walking home last Saturday night.
Saurabh Anand spoke about his ordeal from his hospital bed this week.Credit: The Age
The 33-year-old had been at the pharmacy at Central Square Shopping Centre in Altona Meadows to pick up medicine. He was on the phone to his friend shortly before 7.30pm when he saw a flicker of movement in the darkness in the corner of his eye.
He tuned his head to see five teenagers sitting on a bench near a cafe outside the shopping centre on July 19.
Within seconds, they had surrounded him.
One of the teenagers had his hands in Anand’s pockets, rummaging for valuables.
He alleges another boy punched him in the head repeatedly until he fell to the ground.
A third teen pulled out machete and held it to his throat, he says.
“They didn’t stop there,” Anand tells this masthead from his hospital bed, days after enduring several surgeries to reattach his severed left hand.
The injuries to one of Anand’s hands.
“My instinctive reaction was to bring my arm up to protect my face and wrist. While I was trying to protect myself the machete just went through my wrist. The second attack, the machete went through my hand ... the third went through my bone.”
Anand alleges he was then slashed and stabbed with the machete in his shoulder and back.
“I was just trying to survive,” he says. “All I remember is the pain and my hand was … hanging by a thread. There were bone ruptures on my arm as well.”
“I was just tumbling around, half-concussed, half-conscious.”
Anand is one of the latest victims of a surge in knife violence across Melbourne.
A 17-year-old boy was stabbed about 30 kilometres away at Broadmeadows Central Shopping Centre in the city’s north about 6.30pm the following evening.
Anand was rushed to hospital after he cried out for help to strangers passing by. They found him bloodied outside the shopping centre and called triple zero.
“I saw someone and I just yelled out, ‘I’ve been attacked. Please help me’,” the sales representative says.
The teenagers fled with his phone.
Anand says doctors initially thought they would have to amputate his left hand, but surgeons were able to reattach it following hours of gruelling emergency surgery, which included inserting screws into his wrist and hand.
He also suffered head injuries, broken bones in his left arm and a fracture in his spine.
“The doctors say my injuries are so severe that they are unsure on how this is going to go,” he says.
“They are not sure my arm would ever recover 100 per cent or regain full functionality. I cannot move my hand ... All I feel in it is pain.”
Several teenagers were arrested over Anand’s attack. A 14-year-old appeared at a Children’s Court this week, charged with a spate of offences including intentionally causing serious injury, recklessly causing injury, robbery and unlawful assault.
He was remanded in custody until August 15.
Two 15-year-olds were also charged with intentionally causing serious injury, robbery and unlawful assault.
Police said the two were bailed and will face the Children’s Court on August 11.
Anand says he was distressed after learning the two 15-year-olds were still out in the community after the attack.
He says he is too afraid to return home and his partner is so traumatised she has been sleeping at the hospital by his bedside.
“I’m seeking justice,” Anand says. “I don’t want anyone else in the community to be going through the same trauma I have.
“I want this to be a catalyst [for] change for society where people can understand the consequences of doing this to another human.”
A 14-year-old boy from the Hobsons Bay area was also arrested and is expected to be charged on summons.
Victoria is grappling with its highest youth crime rate since electronic records began, prompting the state government to pass new laws in March toughening bail laws.
Premier Jacinta Allan vowed the reforms would create the “toughest bail test in the country” for repeat offenders.
An Age investigation into knife crime revealed hospitalisations from knife-related attacks started spiking in 2019, alongside an increase in youth offending. The most recent statistics show the number of knives seized this year has reached record levels.
The government has also fast-tracked laws prohibiting the sale of machetes following an armed brawl between youth gangs at Northland Shopping Centre in May.
A full ban on possessing a machete will come into effect on September 1.
The latest crime statistics from police show officers are making a record 208 arrests a day, and seizing an unprecedented number of edged weapons.
When asked last week if the stabbing incidents would prompt the government to expedite the comprehensive ban on machetes, Allan defended the wait.
“It took the United Kingdom 18 months to bring about a ban on the machetes in their nation. We’re doing it in less than six, and it comes into place on the 1st of September,” she said.
“The start of September was identified as the safest and quickest way, based on the advice of Victoria Police, to get those dangerous weapons off our streets.”
The premier described the attack in Altona Meadows as horrific.
For Anand, it is not just the physical injuries from which he continues to recover.
“Every time I close my eyes to go to sleep, I can see them around me, attacking me,” he says.
With Hannah Hammoud