A group of people on Sunday protested against Delhi Law minister Somnath Bharti over his midnight raid on foreign nationals, saying the police should not work at the behest of any minister.
Kavita Krishnan, Secretary of All India Progressive Women Association, demanded the police to act according to the constitutional norms rather than acting at the behest of any minister.
"If the Delhi police violate the law and the constitution, we protest against it all the time. We would like the Delhi government (to be )with us, but, I would like to say that where matters involving gender are concerned, where matters involving racism are concerned, communalism is concerned, caste prejudices are concerned, discrimination is concerned, we don't want the police working at the behest of either a minister or a mob," said Krishnan.
"We want the police working strictly according to the constitutional norms and that is what the chief minister should understand and if he doesn't, it votes very ill for our democracy," Krishnan added.
Earlier today a Delhi court directed the police to file a First Information Report (FIR) after a Ugandan woman alleged that a group of people from a political party entered her house forcibly and molested her.
Four women from Uganda, in a complaint to Delhi Police, have alleged that they were molested by a group of supporters of Delhi Law Minister, Somnath Bharti.
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African national and complainant, Sheillah Catherine, says that she does not defend the fact that some Africans were involved in illegal activities, but said that it was unfair to generalise the notion for every African national.
"I am not going to defend the idea saying that we are spoiling the area, but I am going to defend myself and the people I live with in my room, because if you are saying that these people spoil the area, provide evidence, find one of the people doing that but don't say that all these black people are bad. We are living here with different origins of people," said Catherine.
Daphine, one of the women alleged to have been molested in the raid, says that it was wrong to label someone as a prostitute just because a neighbour (of that person) is in the business.
"If you find a black person doing prostitution, why charge me with the same case? First ask me. I don't want them to start judging us because of what blacks are doing. You first get some evidence; get enough evidence about me then you start judging me. Another thing they say is that they got enough evidence from one of the neighbours. If you find that my neighbour is a prostitute, does it give enough evidence to say that I am prostitute? That is really, I don't know, it's so bad," she said.
Sandra, who is pursuing her studies in Delhi, said that the incident has really upset her and she does not wish to carry on with her studies in India as she feels unsafe here.
"You get a chance to go to our country, you will find many Indians there and they are all free, they are doing business, they are free, no one is mistreating them. In our country when you mistreat a foreigner, you (the one mistreating the foreigner) go to jail and they take you to court. So we don't know how they are going to treat us, so we need justice, we are not safe, we are not on a safe side so we need the government's help and we need justice," said Sandra.
Bharti, who belongs to Aam Aadmi Party, has been involved in a controversy over a midnight raid led by him, in which the four Ugandan women were allegedly mistreated.
The court passed an order under section 156 (3) CrPC (Code of Criminal Procedure) to file an FIR. The court has asked the Delhi Police to submit the report on the matter by February 14.
On Saturday, Indian government condemned the incident and promised an investigation.
On January 16, Bharti had alleged that the Ugandan nationals were part of a drug and prostitution racket and asked the police to raid the place and arrest them. However, police refused to comply with his orders.
After receiving complaints from his constituents, Bharti and his supporters had called the police in south Delhi to bust a prostitution and drug racket.
