Protests over the mob attack on a Tanzanian woman in Bengaluru
Three Bengaluru policemen have been suspended and nine people arrested over the mob attack on Sunday on a Tanzanian woman who was beaten and stripped on a road. The Tanzanian envoy, who has called it a "racist attack", is in the city along with senior Indian foreign ministry officials.
Here are the latest developments:
Bengaluru police chief N Megharik has said that two of the policemen have been suspended for not "doing their duty" at the scene of the crime. The policemen allegedly did nothing to stop the mob and help the woman.
The third policeman allegedly did not try to look for the woman or her friends after the incident. The first arrests were announced only after the incident was reported in the media
Tanzanian High Commissioner John Kijazi, who is part of the delegation from Delhi, has said that the woman was attacked because she is black. "This should not happen in the 21st century. It's not a once in a while event, they come several times in a year," he said yesterday.
On Sunday night, the 21-year-old, an architecture student, was dragged out of a car, beaten and partly stripped by a mob of at least 200.
The Karnataka government has denied that she was stripped and paraded and said it was "definitely not a race attack".
The woman and three other Tanzanian students were driving by a spot where a Sudanese driver had run over a woman, when their car was stopped.
An angry crowd that had gathered after the accident turned on the Tanzanian students.
The crowd beat up the woman and tore at her clothes. "The mob of Indians started chasing and throwing stones at us in the car because they saw we were Africans," the woman has said in her complaint to the police.
She tried to escape in a bus, but was pushed out. "We went into a bus but the driver did not want to move and the people in the bus started to beat us and pushed us outside...I fell on the steps of the bus. The Indians pulled me and continued to beat us," she says.
The woman alleges that the policemen who were in a control room van didn't help her. She says she was told by an officer: "You all look alike and should get the black man who ran over a woman."
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