Afghan student injured in mob attack over taraweeh at Indian hostel

Five international students were injured when a mob stormed a Gujarat University hostel in India on Saturday night allegedly over prayers.

India’s State Home Minister Harsh Sanghavi has reportedly spoken to Gujarat’s top police officers and directed them to arrest the accused as soon as possible and to investigate the matter fairly, NDTV reported.

The students had gathered inside the hostel to offer taraweeh, a prayer offered at night during Ramadan, as there is no mosque on campus.

Soon after starting prayers, a mob armed with sticks and knives stormed the hostel, and attacked the students. They also vandalized their rooms.

Students told NDTV the security guard had tried to stop the incident but had not been able to.

A student from Afghanistan said people in the mob shouted slogans and asked them who had granted them permission to offer prayers in the hostel.

“They attacked us inside the rooms too. They broke laptops, phones and damaged bikes,” he said.

The student said the five injured students are from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Turkmenistan and two from African countries.

“Police arrived half an hour after the incident. By then, the mob had fled. The injured students are in hospital and have informed their embassies,” the student said.

Visuals shared on social media showed damaged bikes, broken laptops and ravaged rooms. In some of the visuals, people are seen throwing stones at the hostel and hurling abuse at the foreign students. In the visuals, the international students are heard saying that they are “scared” and that “this is unacceptable”.

Indian MP and All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief Asaduddin Owaisi has slammed the incident and asked if Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah will intervene.

“What a shame. When your devotion and religious slogans only come out when Muslims peacefully practice their religion. When you become unexplainably angry at the mere sight of Muslims. What is this, if not mass radicalisation? This is the home state of @AmitShah & @narendramodi, will they intervene to send a strong message? I am not holding my breath. @DrSJaishankar domestic anti-Muslim hatred is destroying India’s goodwill,” he said in a post on X.

This comes after a Washington-based research group said last month that anti-Muslim hate speech in India rose by 62% in the second half of 2023 compared to the first six months of the year.