Bengaluru police 'hijack' African victim students in damage control

Bengaluru: A day after the DC expose on the plight of the Tanzanian girl student who was stripped off her clothes and humiliated by an angry mob after an accident in Hesaraghatta in which the girl and her four friends were not involved, the city police went into damage control mode.

While responding to the External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's queries,
city police said that a criminal case had been registered and four people
arrested, but failed to clarify that the four men in detention were charged
with arson and were not part of the mob that had beaten up the young African
woman from Dar es Salaam.

Read: Bengaluru: Mob strips Tanzanian girl, torches her car as police watch

On Wednesday, police picked up the five Tanzanian students from their homes
and took them to Peenya police station, where they recorded their statements
before taking them to Sapthagiri Hospital for medical examination.

The swift action by the police was carried out when the four victims including the girl were on their way to go public with their side of the story at the
Alternative Law Forum.

Read: Africa angry, demands justice after mob strips Tanzanian girl in Bengaluru

According to Mr Bosco Kaweesi, the legal adviser of the All African Student
Association, the police took all the students to the hospital and kept them
in a locked room for hours together with their phones switched off, while
their fellow students along with journalists waited outside the hospital.

"When our student leaders along with journalists reached the hospital, they
were denied permission to interact with the victim students," said Mr
Kaweesi.

Read: Road rage gets a foreign face

"The police are in damage control mode now," he said, adding, "The police
had taken the statements from the victims on how they were all
thrashed and the girl was stripped and shoved around but they have
conveniently omitted the part where the girl approached the police to lodge
a complaint on that fateful night and was turned away."

"If the police can take her complaint on Wednesday, why didn't they do it on
Sunday night," he asked.

Meanwhile, speaking to Deccan Chronicle, T.R. Suresh, DCP, North Division
Claimed, "We have recorded the statement of the victim in which she has
mentioned that her top was torn off and she was physically assaulted and
humiliated by the mob. We have added the appropriate IPC section along with
the arson case that has been registered at the Soladevanahalli police
station."

Read: Bengaluru mob violence: 4 arrested, Sushma asks CM to take strict action

When asked why the police did not register the girl's complaint on
Sunday night, the DCP said, "The police had rushed to the spot and rescued
two African students, one of them was the driver of the second car and took
them to NRR Hospital and then subsequently to the police station."

The DCP did not comment on the condition of the Tanzanian woman who was stripped, humiliated and standing with the torn clothes and her other friends who were left to the mercy of the mob, seeking to revenge the death of Shabana Taj, the 35-year-old who was walking on the street in Hesaraghatta with her husband when she was run over by a car driven by a Sudanese student.