Bengaluru: On a Sunday afternoon, hundreds of young students from African countries spent three hours talking to representatives of the Bengaluru police. It is the first of what has been planned as regular meetings to check the racial tension that has left the city outraged.
Last month, CCTV footage of an attack in a restaurant on students from the Ivory Coast had surfaced; nobody has been arrested so far. In 2013, Wandoh Timothy from Chad, was beaten viciously after a road fight with other motorcyclists – he says he was also racially abused.
“Sometimes there is misunderstanding of culture… I love India. That’s why I married an Indian,” said Mr Timothy, who moved to Bengaluru to work with an IT firm.
“I seek cooperation from the African students… to prevent and detect the crimes,” said P Harishekaran, Additional Commissioner of Police, who created the committee. He also said the committee will address the large problem of students who stay on in Bengaluru after their visas have expired.
Bosco, an activist from Uganda who works an NGO, says that complicated rules and processes are a large part of the problem for visas, and hopes the committee will find a breakthrough. “Majority (of students), they want to go home, they cannot go home. And putting them into jail is not a solution…because that’s exposing the students to criminals,” he said.
Mahamudun, who attended Sunday’s meeting with the police, said, “Now I have to watch out for the action. Because we have said a lot of things, we have put a lot of things together and we want a solution.”
