New Delhi: Over a dozen African nationals were attacked in Rajpkhurd village of Chhatarpur, South Delhi on Wednesday night.
It is learnt locals objected to the “free lifestyle” of these men and women who stayed in the area.
There were four attacks within a span of an hour, sources said, which hint the attacks may have been organised and pre-planned.
Four men and two women have been injured in the attacks and are admitted in hpsital. The Delhi Police on Friday registered four FIRs in the case.
All four complainants, in their 30s, have been residing in Delhi for past few years, police said.
Read: 23-year-old African national, attacked with stones, beaten to death in Delhi
In two cases, the complainants are women -- one a Uganda national and the other a native of South Africa, in the other two, the complainants are two Nigerian men.
In two cases in which the Nigerian men are involved is "believed" to have taken place following an argument with the locals, a senior police official said.
However, circumstances in the other two cases are not clear, he said.
The accused in all four cases are yet to be identified, the official said.
Read: Hyderabad: 23-year-old Nigerian attacked with rod over parking dispute
Police claimed that these are four separate incidents which have nothing to do with the violence against Indians in Congo, following the youth's murder in Vasant Kunj area here.
Police also claimed that the attacks, the causes behind which are yet to be verified, did not take place on racial lines.
"Cases of causing hurt and wrongful restraint have been registered in all four cases. Efforts are on to nab the accused," Additional DCP (south) Nupur Prasad said.
According to reports, the attacks happened between 10:00 and 11:30 in the night. The police have 'ruled out' racist motives.
Read: Bengaluru: Mob strips Tanzanian girl, torches her car as police watch
Nigerian priest Kenneth Igbinosa, living in the nearby Fatehpur Beri village reportedly said that his car was attacked by a mob when he was returning home with his wife and four-month-old baby.
“They yelled something in Hindi. Several others joined them and attacked me with sharp planks of wood. I got back in and drove off to save my wife and baby. They smashed my windscreen and rear screen as I drove to my brother Jason's place close by,” a report in The Telegraph quoted him as saying.
Igbinosa’s brother Jason, who has acted in Bollywood movies such as Dangal and Sultan, came out of the gym to find his car tyres slashed. He rushed home to find his brother injured. “My brother had cuts on his arms and his shirt was torn," Jason said.
The incident has happened in the wake of a spate of racist attacks against African nationals in the country. A 23-year-old Nigerian student was attacked in Hyderabad’s Banjara Hills area with an iron rod over car parking space on Friday.
Earlier in February this year another racist attack had grabbed headlines, where a Tanzanian girl was beaten, stripped, paraded naked, and her car set ablaze in Bengaluru.
In another incident, a Congolese post-graduate student, Masunda Kitada Oliver, was bludgeoned to death in the national capital last Saturday.
The attack triggered a major diplomatic face-off between India and Africa, after African envoys lambasted and warned New Delhi, saying they would consider recommending to their governments not to send any more students to India if nothing was done to stop attacks against African students.
There were reports on Wednesday of a retaliatory attack on an Indian shopkeeper in the Congo.
African envoys stated that several incidents of harassment of Africans in the country “have not been resolved” and that prosecution and conviction of the culprits had not happened. They said the problems of “racism and afro-phobia” existed in India.
The African nations also decided not to participate in the African Day celebrations of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) to be held on Thursday.
Forced into damage-control mode earlier in the day on Wednesday and in a veiled criticism of the perceived hardline position taken by the envoys, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said “all criminal acts should not be seen as racially-motivated”, adding that “thousands of African students continue to pursue their education in India without any issues”.
Making matters worse, the Union Culture minister Mahesh Sharma said that Africa too was unsafe.
