Nigerian getting tied and beaten up is just another shameful day in Delhi
Indians, especially those residing in Delhi NCR, will rise up to the never-ending demand for racial violence and hate crime. On September 24, a Nigerian national was tied to a lamp post and thrashed with sticks by a mob in Delhi’s Malviya Nagar area. Why? The man was allegedly caught while trying to rob a house.
While the incident took place more than two weeks ago, it only came into the media’s attention after the footage of this horrifying incident was posted on Twitter by the news wire service ANI.
#WATCH Nigerian national tied to a pole and beaten up by locals for alleged theft in Delhi's Malviya Nagar (24.09.2017) pic.twitter.com/3zWgbeqvN5
— ANI (@ANI) October 9, 2017
According to reports, the Nigerian man was allegedly caught inside the house of Malviya Nagar resident Krishna Kumar in the early hours of September 24. The mob that caught him, instead of immediately calling over the cops or dragging him to the nearest police station, decided to inflict some of their self-styled justice on him.
The attackers, as can be seen in the video, tied him up, and beat him up with sticks, shouting, "Maaro isey! Chhodna mat isko! (Beat him up! Don't let him go!)". While the audio is not clear, some reports claim that voices in the background can be heard egging on the mob and saying: "Get red chilli. Beat him harder."
It was only after being beaten up brutally, the man was handed over to the police, and consequently jailed. While locals told the police that the reason the culprit was grievously injured was because he fell down the stairs as he was trying to escape, the video shared by ANI is more than enough evidence for what happened.
A Deccan Chronicle report claims that the Nigerian man was suspected of being a drug addict by the mobs and that — while a horrendous suspicion — is more than expected from those with racist sensibilities. That the perpetrator is in anyway related to narcotics is not mentioned in any report so far, but any black person living in Delhi can verify that this is exactly how they are looked upon by people.
In March 2017, NCR's Greater Noida witnessed Nigerian students being accused of cannibalism after the death of a teenager. Not only were the Nigerian students arrested, they were also assaulted by an angry mob — making a mockery of law and order. These Nigerian students too were accused of drug trade.
India’s history of being racist to black-skinned men and women is both shameful and excruciatingly long. And Delhi has always been a hotbed for racism and hate crime.
In January 2014, the then Delhi law minister Somnath Bharati of the Aam Aadmi Party, in a vigilante-style midnight raid, committed several human rights violations on African students and nationals in Delhi’s Khirki Extension neighbourhood. Several men and women were assaulted and an African woman was allegedly forced to give her urine samples in public for a drug test.
But of course, Indians cannot be racist. The Nigerian national was, after all, caught trying to rob a house; therefore, it seems only fair that a mob did with him what it saw fit.
How can we ever forget what Tarun Vijay, a former BJP MP, said: “If we [Indians] were racist, why would we have the entire south [India]? Which is you know, completely Tamil, you know Kerala, you know Karnataka and Andhra. Why do we live with them [if we were racist]? We have blacks, black people around us. You are denying your own nation, you are denying your ancestry, and you are denying your culture.”