NEW DELHI: Extremely violent visuals of an African national being beaten up in New Delhi’s Malviya Nagar area surfaced on Monday, raising concern over racism-related attacks on Africans in the country and their safety.
The Nigerian man was accused of theft by locals in the area who sought to thrashing him before the police reached the spot, according to CNN-News18 news channel. A lot of African nationals live in Malviya Nagar.
According to the police, when the incident took place on 24 September, the African man was in an inebriated condition. As the locals had already registered a complaint of the theft charges, the police arrested the Nigerian man and took him into custody.
The video shows the African man tied up with rope and beaten up with sticks mercilessly even while he says “Please forgive me”. The attackers can be heard swearing while they tied his foot to the pole and continued thrashing him despite repeated cries for mercy.
This is not the first instance of racially-motivated attacks against African nationals in the National Capital Region.
In March this year, a Nigerian student was attacked in Greater Noida, some 40 kilometres from Delhi, following protests over the death of a Class 12 student of a residential colony there due to drug overdose. Some people who were holding a candle-light vigil for the student attacked the Nigerians suspecting them of having drugged the student.
Following this, Nigeria summoned the Indian envoy in Abuja to express displeasure over the attacks on Nigerian students in India and voiced concern that the incident was not the first of its kind.
