As per reports, an Indian Political Science student at Cambridge University claimed that he was racially abused by a man for defending a woman clad in a hijab at the Conford House Surgery. The Briton shouted “Brexit, go back home” after he was confronted by Rickesh Advani for making disparaging comments towards a woman. The Police are now investigating the matter.
The comment by the middle-aged White man is being interpreted as a reference to the non-white skin colour of the Indian student who believes that he was told to get out of Britain because of his skin colour despite the fact that he was born and brought up in the country. “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,” said the student who also runs a charity for homeless people.
Advani also lamented the fact that no one stood up for him during the row. He said, “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.”
Simon Gridley, a manager at the surgery, personally apologized to Rickesh Advani in a letter for the conduct of the authorities during the incident. He wrote, “I would like to apologise 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. This I would particularly like to apologise for, as this was not our intention. Our intention was to simply defuse the situation before it turned into something physical, and I deeply regret that the way we did this made you feel like you had done something wrong.” He further added, “I know an apology is not the same as getting it right the first time, but again, I sincerely apologise.”
