New Delhi: Breaking her silence over the assault by a mob in Bengaluru, the Tanzanian student said Thursday that no policemen came to her help while the attackers set upon her.
"There were policemen around before the attacks began, but once they started beating us I do not know where they went," the 21-year-old woman told CNN-IBN in a telephone interview.
The woman's account belied versions by the Karnataka police and ministers which suggested that it was not racist attack but a case of road rage.
"They saw us as Africans and started beating us," she said.
Initial reports said the woman was assaulted, stripped and paraded naked by a mob in the outskirts of the city on Sunday, but the Karnataka government denied she was paraded naked.
She said there were a large number of people who had gathered at the spot and that they attacked her friends as well. Five people have been arrested so far in the case.
The attack happened when she and her friends reached the spot in Hesaraghatta where a car driven by a Sudanese national had mowed down a 35-year-old woman half an hour earlier.
Different officials of the Karnataka government gave different versions on what happened afterwards.
While Home Minister G Parameshwara claimed the student was not paraded naked, DGP Om Prakash said the student was stripped but not molested. All this, a day after city police commissioner NS Megharikh said she was not stripped, but molested.
According to All African Students Union's legal adviser Bosco Kaweesi, the woman student was stripped by a section of the mob and pushed out of a slow-moving bus that was passing by as she tried to board it to escape.
All state officials rushed to deny it was a racist attack, but Tanzanian high commissioner John W H KijaziWE pointed out that some other African students in the city too had complained of harassment.
"We request the Government of India to ensure safety and security of our students in Bengaluru and all other places in India," he said.
The high commissioner, who is also the dean of the African Diplomatic Corps, will visit Bengaluru on Friday with a team of officials from the Ministry of External Affairs.
The day also saw a political war of words over the incident between the BJP and the Congress which rules the state.
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