An Indian-origin student in the United Kingdom has been racially attacked by a man, yelling “Brexit, go back home” after the Briton made sexist remarks towards a hijab-clad woman.
Rickesh Advani, 28, a political science student at Cambridge University, was hit with an outburst of racial abuse after his comments towards the woman.
Advani stood up to the man in a Cambridge hospital after a female student received sexist comments and then he was heard saying “no not you, love” to a woman wearing a hijab.
The lurid footage shows Advani being told to “pipe down”, before going on to make the racial comment. He instantly walked out of the surgery and reported the racial abuse to police.
“I was absolutely disgusted by what I had heard and couldn’t believe that in 2018 people can be so bigoted. At the very first opportunity I told him to politely stop and hoped that would be the end of it,” Advani said.
“Any reasonable human in that situation would have accepted his wrong but he became unnecessarily aggressive to me,” Advani, who also runs a charity for homeless people, said.
He says that he was disappointed by how none of the other patients in the surgery stood by him when he confronted the racist and sexist comments.
“I was very shocked that I was the only one that stood up and said ‘no this is not right’. Even when I asked someone to call the police, everyone just sat there and I hoped people would stick up for something so wrong,” he said.
“Investigations continue. No arrests have been made,” a police spokesman was quoted as saying by the report.
The Cornford House Surgery manager Simon Gridley wrote apology letter saying, “I would like to apologize for our handling of the racial abuse you received on that day. My colleague mentioned that you felt you were unfairly treated as you (were made to feel) that you were the guilty party, when you had, quite rightly, stood up for another member of the public.”
“I know an apology is NOT the same as getting it right the first time, but again, I sincerely apologize,” he added.
By Sowmya Sangam
