Vijayawada: Hyderabad journalist religiously profiled over appearance

In a shocking incident of racial profiling, a Hyderabad journalist based in Vijaywada faced an embarrassing police enquiry thanks to nosy neighbours who “thought he was a Muslim” moving around suspiciously. The complainant, his own neighbour, shockingly assumed that the reporter was “a terrorist”, and bizarrely told the police that the journalist also “looked like a Pakistani”.

The incident took place two days ago, when the journalist in question heard a knock on his door at 12:45 am. To his surprise, two police officials turned up at his house after receiving a complaint about him looking “suspicious”.

“Everyone in the building knows I’m a journalist, and the fact that they called the police assuming I am a Muslim shows how prejudiced people are here. Because of my credentials, I did not face much of an issues. Had it been an ordinary person, maybe the police would not have backed down like they did after verifying who I was,” he told Siasat.com.

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The journalist, who did not want to be named out of concern, pointed out that even though he is not a Muslim, having a beard is another thing that was flagged about him. “Eventually I found out that the neighbour thought I was up to something because I had Amazon parcels coming in regularly while I was setting up the apartment I rented out. He is supposedly an ex-electricity department employee and thought the parcels were transmitters. Even then it does not give him the right to suspect anything this way, that too over appearance,” he told Siasat.com.

In a voice recording of the lady cop and the journalist, accessed by Siasat.com, he was told that the complaint was made, stating that he may be a terrorist. Such prejudice is shocking, least to say, as even his journalist credentials were not enough initially for the police to realise that it was a call simply made out of assumptions.

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