A man approached a Russian woman named Koko alias Kristina strolling through Sarojini Nagar, a well-known street market in Delhi and asked if she would want to become friends. However, his approach towards her was unfriendly and uncomfortable. The YouTuber who runs a YouTube channel named ‘Koko in India’ was visibly upset after the unwanted attention.
She mentioned, “My friend, I am in Sarojini Nagar,” at the beginning of the video when the individual could be witnessed following her after which he asked her to befriend him. “Would you like to be my friend,” he proposed to her in Hindi which brought her discomfort and she replied, “I don’t know you.”
However, her polite refusal didn’t deter him and he pressed, “We can know each other after being friends.” She denied and reiterated that she didn’t want any new friends to which he responded with a lewd remark and stated, “You are very sexy.” The entire episode rendered her quite uneasy and she ended the conversation with, “Okay, bye-bye,” and managed to avoid his unwelcome advances.
The Russian who is fluent in Hindi wrote, “He doesn’t want an Indian friend,” as she shared the footage of the awkward encounter on her official YouTube page.
Going by another video posted by the vlogger, it can be seen that the Russian woman had talked to the man earlier while looking for saree shops at Sarojini Nagar. She was talking to people on the street while roaming around, and he was among the people she talked to, who said he was originally from Ayodhya. After that, a South Delhi girl who recognised her talked to her and showed her where she could find good sarees. The vlogger is then seen entering a shop to buy sarees.
It seems that after the brief conversation, the youth continued to follow her, and asked for friendship because he is ‘bored’ with Indian friends and he finds her ‘sexy’.
Notably, this isn’t the first time that foreigners have faced harassment in India. A businessman named Navab Hayath Sharif was apprehended by the Bengaluru police in June of this year for acting inappropriately toward a foreign national. He was taken into custody from Chor Bazaar in Bengaluru’s Chickpet neighbourhood where he had manhandled and harassed Dutch YouTuber Pedro Mota as the latter was filming his vlog.
The Rajasthan Police arrested a reportedly mentally ill person named Deepak Jalani from Jodhpur for harassing a Korea-based vlogger in the city in April. He flashed his private part to the woman as she was shooting a vlog to showcase the beauty of the place. The incident was brought to the attention of the police when the clip became popular on social media.
Delhi Police caught three people, including a juvenile in relation to the molestation and abuse of a 22-year-old Japanese girl on the day of Holi in March this year. The unfortunate instance took place in the National Capital’s Paharganj region. The accused also belonged to the same area. They were captured touching her and smearing colour on her face as one of them cracked an egg on her head and shouted “Holi Hai, Holi Hai.”
