CANBERRA: Australian police on Friday angrily criticized a cartoon in an Indian newspaper that depicted them as racist Ku Klux Klan members following the fatal stabbing of an Indian student.

A cartoon in the Delhi Mail Today newspaper portrayed a person in a white Ku Klux Klan hood and wearing a Victoria state police badge against a black background and the words: "We are yet to ascertain the nature of the crime."

Accounting graduate Nitin Garg, 21, originally from the state of Punjab in northern India, was stabbed to death last Saturday night on his way to a job at a fast food outlet in Melbourne. "To say that our detectives are going slow on this, or for some reason trying to protect somebody, is incredibly offensive and wrong," said Greg Davies, secretary of the Victoria Police Association, the police officers' union.