The Tanzanian woman says she was beaten and stripped by a mob in Bengaluru on Sunday.
A team comprising the Tanzanian High Commissioner and senior MEA officials will travel to Bengaluru today in connection with the alleged assault and stripping of a Tanzanian woman there, an incident termed as "isolated" by the government.
In her statement to the police, the Tanzanian woman who was attacked by a mob on Sunday has described a harrowing chase on the roads of Bengaluru. She and her friends have alleged that she was stripped and paraded, though the state government has denied it.
The 21-year-old, an architecture student, said she and her friends were out for dinner when their car was stopped by the mob.
"The mob of Indians started chasing and throwing stones at us in the car because they saw we were Africans," the woman told the police.
Half an hour before their car was stopped, a Sudanese driver had run over a woman. An angry crowd that had gathered at the spot turned on the Tanzanian students.
"They blocked us and we got out of the car, my two friends managed to escape and run, as for me I started talking to the police asking him what happened but he didn't tell me anything," the woman says.
"The Indians started beating my friend and me and started pulling our clothes and (tore) them leaving me with not on top and left me like that (sic)."
She shares she entered a bus, "the driver didn't want to move and the people in the bus started to beat us and pushed us outside and I fell on the stairs of the bus. As the Indians outside pulled me and my friend outside and continue beating us."
The woman and her friends ran to a shop and sat, but the mob kept chasing them. She says an Iranian came to their rescue, after which they went to a friend's home and hid for two days.
The Karnataka government and the union foreign ministry have asserted that it was not a race attack.
"If the accident hadn't happened, this could have been avoided," said State Home Minister G Parmeshwar. He also said that "there was no stripping or parading naked."
But a friend of the woman said: "She was beaten up just because she was African. She was beaten, stripped naked and paraded."