Yesterday some reports had come out which claimed that a Kenyan woman’s cab was stopped in the wee hours of Wednesday in Sector Omicron of Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh. She was then reportedly slapped and thrashed by the people. The reports further stated that she was then taken to a local hospital where she was treated for trauma and placed on oxygen support for a few hours before being released.
This incident also came under intense focus as it followed racist attacks in Greater Noida where a mob reportedly attacked as many as 9 Africans at various locations, which resulted in two getting hospitalized.
The allegations of the Kenyan woman ensured that the police filed a case against 10 unknown assailants under various sections of the IPC. The woman is then supposed to have gone to the nearest police station and was then shifted to the hospital by the authorities present.
In what now appears as a twist in the tale, ASP Dharmendra Chavan of the UP police, who had investigated the matter, has now claimed that case was fake. DGP UP Javeed Ahmad too tweeted the same:
https://twitter.com/javeeddgpup/status/847261635739660288
As revealed by the police, they managed to track the cab driver who refuted all claims of the incident and stated that he dropped her at 5:47 AM and left. Police has also claimed that the location mentioned by the girl was false, as they tallied it with the GPS location data. Reports say the girl had a fight with her friends, but ended up reporting it as racist attack. Plus reports also claimed that the girl’s friends also stole Rs 500 from the cab driver.
All this though doesn’t negate the fact that racism is an issue in the Indian society. The recent incidents of assault on Africans by the mob are an indication of that. Plus it has long been in public knowledge about how our own countrymen from the North Eastern States are reported to have been a victim of racism in their own country.
However, such false claims only ensures that the fight against real racism gets a setback. Realising that this could hurt the wider cause, the Association of the African Students in India have said that they were “embarrassed” by the incident and that girl was going through a mental trauma due to “family issues”. The association further claimed that the Kenyan girl gave false information to police,
It has also been reported that the Kenyan embassy too has decided to withdraw the case. Embassy officials revealed that the police has assured that they will not file a case against the girl for lodging a false case.