A video has surfaced, in which a group of residents belonging to a particular locality are seen assaulting some students and then dragging them away from there. It is being alleged that in the incident which transpired in some locality in Kolkata, few students of Nagaland were harassed and forced to leave their houses by the local residents. They were also mocked by being referred to as “coronavirus”.
A digital media platform The North-Eastern Chronicle shared the video on its Instagram page, with the caption: “Students from Nagaland are forced to leave their houses in Kolkata, they are being harassed and mocked as “CoronaVirus”.
Earlier in the day, the Delhi Police had registered a case against a man who allegedly spat on Manipuri woman and called her ‘corona’. The incident allegedly took place in Vijay Nagar area of North Delhi on Sunday night. A case under section 509 of the Indian Penal Code is registered for insulting the modesty of a woman.
In a similar incident on March 18, two students from Darjeeling Hills studying at premier institutes in Kolkata had allegedly faced racial taunts linked to coronavirus in separate incidents on city streets.
Both had taken to social media sites to narrate their ordeal. One of them, a 21-year old woman who is pursuing Masters degree at the Presidency University, shared a video on WhatsApp on Monday, in which she was seen confronting two men who had allegedly uttered ‘coronavirus’ pointing at her on a central Kolkata.
The second incident involved a male student of the Jadavpur University, who claimed that when he was waiting for an autorickshaw, a transgender woman asked her companion to move away from him, saying “coronavirus esechhe” (coronavirus has arrived).
While the Kolkata Police sources said no complaint has been lodged by any of the two students, the students said that after they threatened to take action against the men, they apologised, therefore they did not take any follow-up action.