VIOLENT ATTACKS

African students are routinely singled out and attacked because of their skin-tone. The attacks are often born out of rumours and unverified claims.

2014 JAN 14

Somnath Bharti, then Delhi’s law minister, conducts a night-time raid in Delhi’s Khirki Extension purportedly to combat prostitution. Police later say that “nine African women were victims of molestation and manhandling by a mob led by Bharti”.

SEP 28

Three black students at the Delhi’s Rajiv Chowk metro station are repeatedly hit with sticks and fists, in response to rumours that they were “misbehaving with female passengers”. Police does little to stop the violence.

2016 JAN 31

A Tanzanian woman is assaulted and stripped by a mob in Bengaluru. A number of her Tanzanian friends are also attacked. She is wrongly suspected of a crime actually committed by a Sudanese student, who is beaten and whose car is set on fire.

MAY 20

Masunda Kitada Oliver, a student from Congo, is killed during a dispute over an auto rickshaw in south Delhi.

2017 MAR 24

Following unproven claims that African students sold drugs to an Indian teenager who later overdosed, a group of Nigerians is attacked with canes and metal dustbins around Pari Chowk in Uttar Pradesh’s Greater Noida. The next day, a young Kenyan woman is pulled out of an Ola taxi and beaten at Knowledge Park.