Delhi Police reach out to Africans with confidence-building measures

Taking stock of the racially-motivated attacks against members of the African community in Greater Noida, Delhi Police are taking no chances to see repeat of such incidents in the national Capital and have conducted back-to-back sensitisation programmes with the African community here.

According to Delhi Police spokesperson Madhur Verma, 19 such meetings have been conducted across various districts since 2016 and a special helpline number has been provided to help the African nationals living in Delhi.

The programmes have not been undertaken in the backdrop of the mob violence, as senior Delhi Police officials have claimed that the programmes have been conducted on a regular basis since last year's racially-motivated attack against the African community in South Delhi's Rajpur Khurd village in May last year.

Speaking to Millennium Post, Joint Commissioner of Police (South Eastern Range), R P Upadhaya said: "We have been engaging with the African community for the past one year and have conducted regular meetings. Every three months, we conduct such meetings and in the recent meeting 50 of our African friends from various associations took part. The Deputy Commissioner of Police (South) Ishwar Singh has been heading these meetings. We conducted two back-to-back meetings which were pre-planned."

The meetings generally involve talking to members of the African community and listening to their grievances. These are confidence building measures taken to educate and sensitise the African nationals and the local people about each other's culture.

In the recently conducted meetings, the African community had aired their grievances relating to their universities, rent problems and visa issues.

"They have not aired any problems in which they have pointed fingers at the Indian community. They are quite satisfied and now have some problems relating to rent issues or visa issues. They also talk about their experiences in universities and we take stock of all their grievances," said a police official who attended the meetings.

The inputs are later taken and shared among the senior police officials from South District. The officers are apprised about new developments so that the police may act in a timely fashion.