Attack on Tanzanian not racist: Karnataka minister Parameshwara

BENGALURU/NEW DELHI: The Karnataka government went into an overdrive over allegations of a mob stripping and attacking a Tanzanian woman in Bengaluru on January 31, while maintaining it was not a racist attack, even as the police arrested five men over the attack.

Chief minister Siddaramaiah said he had directed chief secretary Arvind Jadhav to send a report to external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on the incident. He denied Congress V-P Rahul Gandhi had also sought a report, but home minister G Parameshwara, also Karnataka Congress president, said that the state unit had submitted a report to Gandhi on the issue.

“The attack on the woman and her companions was not racist. It was a fallout of the mob mentality following an accident there,” Parameshwara said. The minister said the woman was not stripped, as reported by sections of the media, but was attacked and dragged by her clothes, along with a male companion.

He quoted her written complaint to the police. Darshana Mitra, human rights lawyer who has taken up the Tanzanian woman’s case, said the police FIR was registered under IPC sections for assault and outraging the modesty of a woman.

“The woman told us that her T-shirt had been torn. The IPC section would not have been applied to this case unless there was an attempt to strip her. And neither she nor her companions would have been targeted, if the attack was not racist. We do not know what the home minister is talking about.”