India’s Foreign Minister ‘deeply pained over shocking incident’
Five people have been arrested by police in the southern Indian city of Bangalore in connection with an attack on a Tanzanian student.
A mob beat up and partially stripped the 21-year-old woman after a Sudanese student’s car ran over and killed a local woman on Sunday night.
The woman and her three Tanzanian friends were attacked after a case of mistaken identity as they were passing by the site of the accident.
The young woman’s top was ‘removed’ after the crowd chased her, police said.
India’s Foreign Minister, Sushma Swaraj, tweeted on Wednesday that she was deeply pained over the ‘shameful incident’, and asked the chief minister of Karnataka state – of which Bangalore is the capital – to “ensure safety and security of all foreign students and stringent punishment for the guilty.”
Tanzania’s High Commissioner to India, John Kijazi, on Thursday said she was attacked because ‘she was black’, and that the incident had ‘an element of racism’.
Famous Bollywood actor, Hrithik Roshan, tweeted: “Injustice like this shames the entire human race. The ones who did wrong must be made to understand and repent!”
State Home Minister G Parameshwara told a press meeting that more arrests would follow depending on the inquiry.
The minister, who named the victim, denied that the Tanzanian woman was paraded naked saying: “No such thing happened.”
