Another Hate Crime: Kashmiri Businessman Attacked by Goons in Mumbai

Zafar Aafaq | Clarion India

NEW DELHI—A Kashmiri businessman was thrashed by a gang of goons in Mumbai in the intervening night of Sunday and Monday, the commercial capital of India. He laid on the road scarred and bruised.

Mohammad Adnan, 25, a businessman from Srinagar, was waylaid by three men on the street when he was returning to his apartment in the Mohammad Ali Road area of the city at around midnight. He had gone out to buy bread and Pulav for Sehri.

Speaking to Clarion India shortly after the incident, Adnan said as he was about to reach his apartment, he saw a group of men having a squabble with a food delivery boy from Zamato. “While I was entering the building, one of the men grabbed me by my throat,” Adnan said. “They left the Zamato guy aside and started beating me. They tore apart my shirt.”

Adnan who has beard and a skull cap said that the men abused him and called him names using communal and regional slurs. “They addressed me with a refrain, ‘you Kashmiris are like this’.”

After the incident, Adnan called the police and his neighbour for help. A police party was on the spot taking stock of the situation when Clarion India spoke to Adnan.

He said he later came to know that the attackers share the same building where he lives.

The incident came at a time when India is in the grip of a renewed wave of Islamophobia amidst coronavirus lockdown.

Earlier this month Kashmiri Muslim labourers were attacked in Assam. Before that, in April a similar incident was reported from Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh.