Racism, mob violence, police apathy and my Sunday afternoon

 

Last Sunday afternoon I found myself witness a mob attack three black men in the metro station. This is what happened:

I had joined a local walking group to take a tour of some of the festivities leading up to the Dusshera holiday. As we were passing through the central metro station of Delhi--basically Delhi's equivalent of Penn station, always insanely crowded and hectic--I immediately noticed a large group of men with their phones out filming something.

My first thought was, I wonder if there is a Bollywood actor there, but what famous person would be crazy enough to come into this metro station? But then I noticed the glass police booth, and the man standing on top of it.

I was standing about 50 feet away, beyond the edge of the crowd, so I didn't have the best view. But this is what a I did see: One man, in a brightly colored shirt, was crouched on top of the glass police kiosk while a crowd at least 300 men strong (I didn't see any women) formed a semi-circle enclosing the kiosk. The way this station is laid out there is also a sort of balcony overpass which was also packed with onlookers (men and women here)--I'd say all in all at least 800 people were watching this spectacle.

The crowd around the police kiosk were throwing bottles and other things at the man crouched on the roof, which he was attempting to dodge. I saw one man from the crowd try to climb onto the room to pull the guy off, but he was promptly rebuffed by the fellow on top by a painful-looking kick to the face.

The crowd was certainly involved in the spectacle, people were yelling and throwing things, but it seemed like the vast majority of onlookers were watching and filming. Literally--there had to be hundreds of phones recording.

Despite the whole mob occurring around a police kiosk the police were no where to be found.

Suddenly the a group yell/cheer erupted from the crowd and a number of people broke away and started sprinting in my direction. Our guide leader--who is generally a total stress-pot--absolutely freaked out. She screamed, "We need to get out of here NOW" and ran towards the further end of the platform. I walked in that direction too and had my back turned to the mob for about 20 seconds. By the time I reached the corner of the platform and looked back the man was no longer on the roof of the police kiosk and waves of cheering were being pouring from the crowd. (Like you hear at a sports match. "Ooooooh", "Aaaaaah"). I said, "Shit, I think they pulled him down." My friend said, "Or maybe the police have just arrived?"

Well, given that we were totally unable to cross the platform my group decided to take the metro one stop down in the wrong direction, and then switch over at the next stop. So, we exited the mobbed platform swiftly and made it to our final destination without incident.

But, four hours later I was passing through the exact same metro station and walked by the police kiosk. The area was now empty, except for the semicircle of about 15 police officers who were guarding what had been the kiosk. I say, "What had been" because, if you recall my initial description, the police kiosk was made of glass--and all four walls now lay shattered on the ground--intermixed with lots and lots of blood. Lots of blood. It was a gory scene.

So, that's what I saw, but I really had no idea what happened until the papers came out today. There seem to be lots of confusion over the facts of what happened--and it's interesting to see how different newspapers portray the events with either lots of sympathy for the victims ("Africans climb police booth roof to escape mob") or lots of sympathy for the mob  ("Nigerians 'misbehave' with woman on subway, beaten up"). Here is what seems to have happened, however.

Three black students (erroneously identified by almost every newspaper as Nigerian, although actually none of them were, and two may not have even been African) got into an altercation with some Indian men on the metro car. This altercation 'may' have been incited may improper behavior towards a woman, or it 'may' have just been a shoving match between a the black men and a group of Indian students. The black students were pushed off the car, and followed by some of the Indian passengers. I think at that point the police intervened and took the black students to the police kiosk, but either the mob took the students away from the police or the police just kind of let the mob do their thing until back-up arrived. According to most the news stories, the black students injuries were minor--but considering how much blood I saw I think that is really unlikely to be the case.

In any case, videos of the event have been circulating on facebook, click here if you're interested. But, warning--this is not for the faint of heart.