Students, one from IIT Bombay and two from IIT Delhi, currently in their sophomore years, allegedly had to face ‘racial profiling’ by the Italian police. The students were waiting to take connecting train from Ventimiglia, when they were inquired by local Italian security for passport verification on Monday. Although the students were holding the required identity papers, they were flown to Bari, 1,100 km down south with several other people of varied nationalities, who were not carrying their passports.
The three students, who are interning with Inria Sophia Antipolis-Mediterranee since early May, are the pursuing Computer Science and had to travel to port city of Genoa for the weekend. Students in the campuses have condemned this act with terming it ‘blatant racial profiling’.
Students named as Uday Kusupati, from IIT Bombay and Akshit Goyal and Deepak Bhatt from IIT Delhi, have submitted a detailed letter about their experience to the Indian embassy there and trio is in Rome. According to the reports they will be flown down to Nice, France on Wednesday morning. Ugo Ciarlatani, Italian Consul general, said, “The only thing I can tell you is that Italians are not racists at all as you can see with the huge numbers of Syrians coming to Italy everyday.”
Shreerang Javdekar, editor of the in-campus Insight magazine said, “While the security guards could not speak English, all these three students tried to show their passports but were taken away.” The panic started when Italian police started to inquire people at the Ventimiglia station.
“There they managed to contact their families and Indian colleagues followed by around 10 hours of no contact whatsoever. The authorities and their professor guides were contacted by the families and at 10:30pm IST, they were informed that a "passport verification" was under way . Personnel from the Indian embassy finally intervened and defused the situation,” added Javdekar.
A family member said, “No reason was given for being flown to Bari. They said their IDs would be checked only in Bari. Uday contacted me and our family and their intern colleagues in France. The colleagues and professors helped out by contacting the embassy.”
A college dean has said that students need to carry their passport with them all the time in Europe. The embassy has calmed down the family members. All their travel expenses from Rome to Nice will be on Italian expenses. Students are planning to file a complaint for the trouble they had to face.
By Prajakt K.
