Bengaluru, known to be an IT hub, Garden City or Pensioner’s Paradise is recently in news for all the wrong reasons. The recent incident of the alleged assault and stripping of a 21-year-old Tanzanian woman is horrendous in the series of growing terrorist and criminal activities in the State. The downplaying attitude of Siddaramaiah government is much more appalling. What is more shocking is the silence of the Congress leadership who do not miss a chance to raise the bogey of ‘intolerance’ and ‘imposition of ideas’ on various sections of society is keeping mum on continuous deterioration of law and order condition in the Congress ruled State. As claimed to be the sole custodian of ‘democracy’ and ‘plurality’ of Bharat, Congress and Rahul Gandhi have many questions to answer on this front.
Rahul Gandhi who managed to rush to Dadri and Hyderabad did not even bother to ask Chief Minister from his own party about the action he has taken on such ghastly incident. Mind you, this was not an isolated incident. Few months ago there was an incident of an Australian man was violently harassed for sporting a tattoo of an Bharateeya Goddess. Now a Tanzanian student of Business Administration was facing the wrath of mob fury.
The incident took place on January 31, 2016, when a Sudanese national drove his car over a 35-year-old woman, killing her. A mob quickly got together to teach him a lesson but he managed to escape. His car was burnt down. As the mob fury was high and Karnataka Police was still sleeping after half an hour of the incident, a Tanzanian student who was passing by with her friends was attacked. According to reports she was chased, assaulted, and her clothes were torn by the mob. Her car was also torched. Apparently, her only crime was that she belonged to the same race as the Sudanese, African, who killed a woman in an accident. The apathy of Karnataka Police did not end there. The police did not register a complaint until Tuesday that was also after the Tanzanian High Commission registered a protest with the Bharateeya government. There are reports of the arson and rioting against the other African students too.
The insensitive approach of the State administration is quite evident from the fact that the State Home Minister immediately came up with a denial mode. The statement of alleged victim was in public domain still he downplayed the incident by saying that a case of ‘road rage’ and ‘mob fury’, the obvious defence was Bengalurian mindset. Identity politics in every form is a favourite dictum of Congress Party. Sometimes it is Muslim, then Dalit, now a Bengalurian, conveniently missing that a foreign student also had an identity which was diplomatically much more sensitive. Thanks to the timely intervention by the External Affairs Ministry, police was forced into action and Tanzanian student could be assured of their safety.
As per the National Crime Records Bureau data, crime graph of Bengaluru is on rise, especially in terms of cases of crime against women. Recently, many terrorists and terrorist sympathisers were arrested in the State of Karnataka. Radical ideology is gaining ground in northern parts of the State. At the same time, allegations of corruption and criminalisation of politics are growing. As Congress led State governments are shielded by party’s national leadership under the garb of alleging Centre for every law and order situation, they are happy with their lackadaisical attitude.
This shameful act has brought disdain to Bharat as a nation. Rahul Gandhi who does not miss a chance to blame RSS for all the wrong things should wake-up and get rid of this policy of selective outrage. Otherwise, it would be difficult for the grand old party led by a dynasty to hold on to whatever little political space it is occupying.
