Ugliness in Massachusetts....

NEW BEDFORD -- A vicious robbery of a pizza delivery man escalated when the assailants mistook the graduate student for a Muslim, Fairhaven police said yesterday, as they filed hate crime charges against a second man arrested in the attack....

When Mr. [Saurabh] Bhalerao, an Indian, arrived with their order, two men shoved him into the apartment and pushed him to the floor.

"They mistook him for being Islamic and the savagery that occurred after that seemed to be initiated from their belief that he was a Muslim," Chief Souza said.

Even after Mr. Bhalerao was lying on the floor, at least four attackers continued to kick and beat him, he told police. At one point, one suspect hit him with a kitchen chair, Mr. Marsh told police.

The perpetrators also burned Mr. Bhalerao's body with lit cigarettes, police said.

The delivery man, a graduate student at UMass Dartmouth, tried to tell his attackers that he is a Hindu, not a Muslim, but they did not relent, Chief Souza said....

(Link courtesy of Lucianne.com -- and to give the usually lunkheaded right-wingers over there a little credit, they're all on the victim's side.)