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Racist, ignorant and perverted: Tanzanian student's incident exposes what ails Indian society

Speed News Desk | Updated on: 14 February 2017, 5:34 IST

Racism isn't new to Indians. We do it often enough whenever we chance upon a foreigner with a different skin tone. And why just foreigners? We do it often enough to our own countrymen from the northeast. Chinkis, we call them.

But this incident not only exposes our hypocrisy when it comes to people of colour, it also brings to fore other issues that are equally scary.

A Sudanese national ran over and fatally injured a 35-year-old woman from Bengaluru's Hesaraghatta area on Sunday. Within an hour of her death, a mob - or self-proclaimed vigilantes if you will - stopped a car passing by, dragged out the only woman inside and stripped her.

The Tanzanian woman is a 21-year-old BBA student of the city's Acharya College. She has no connection whatsoever with the accused Sudanese man. But she was dark-skinned just like him. And she was a woman, just like the unfortunate woman who died. In a world as twisted as ours, that seemed to be motivation enough to strip a woman naked and parade her on the streets. To beat up her companions. To torch a car down to its skeleton.

Bosco Kaweesi, legal adviser of All African Students Union in Bengaluru, told The News Minute: "The students and her friends came in her car half an hour after the accident. The mob thought they were with the same group and forced them to come out of the car. While three of her friends escaped, she was held by the locals, stripped, beaten up and paraded on the road."

To make matters worse, Kaweesi says when a bystander tried to help the young woman and by her his t-shirt, he too was beaten up by the mob. When she tried to escape by jumping onto a bus, some passengers inside pushed her out. And when she turned to the police, they refused to file her complaint.

As details of this horrific incident trickles in, Twitter has gone into a meltdown.

First published: 3 February 2016, 6:20 IST