The complaint lodged by a Kenyan woman alleging that she had been pulled out of a cab and assaulted in Greater Noida in the wee hours of Wednesday, turned out to be false as police on Thursday denied any such incident took place. They produced the driver of the taxi in which the woman had travelled, to corroborate their version.
“The Kenyan national was not assaulted and the report lodged in this regard was false,” said Gautam Budh Nagar Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Dharmendra Yadav in a Press conference on Thursday.
Cab driver Pintu also said that he had dropped the Kenyan national at Sector Omicron in Greater Noida and had witnessed no such attack.
The SSP further claimed that there were no injury marks to support the woman’s version either.
“A Police Control Room (PCR) van stood just a few metres from the location of the alleged assault, yet no one saw any attack taking place,” said the senior police officer.
The woman had called a police chowki in-charge whose number she had taken earlier in the morning and complained about the assault, the SSP said.
He added that when the police personnel reached Ivory Hospital, they were told that doctors were not treating her.
The Kenyan national was then taken to the Kailash hospital from where too she was soon discharged, Yadav said.
Meanwhile, Superintendent of Police Sujata Singh said since the matter pertained to a foreigner and involved the foreign offices of India and Kenya, “We are waiting for a Government order to expunge the FIR”.
Singh further said they were also informed by the President of the Association of African Students in India that the woman may be “lying because of depression”.
Circle Officer Abhinandan Singh said the woman was depressed due to a family problem and had a fight with one of her friends on the night she reported the incident.
“She fabricated the story and tried to relate the matter with the recent attacks on Nigerians,” Abhinandan Singh said, referring to a series of shocking attacks on Nigerian students in Greater Noida on Monday.
“There has been a meeting earlier on Thursday with Kenyan diplomats,” External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said in his weekly media briefing.
“It has been conveyed to us that the understanding of Kenyan authorities is that the reported incident of attack on the Kenyan woman in question does not correspond to reality,” he said.
Maria Burendi, a student, alleged she was pulled out of an Ola cab around 4.30 a.m. near Alstonia Apartments in Knowledge Park of the satellite town near Delhi when she was returning home after meeting a friend.
The woman, in her 20s, alleged that she was slapped and kicked in her abdomen by 10-12 men at Greater Noida in Gautam Budh Nagar district.
The allegation came close on the heels of the attack on African students by a mob in Greater Noida. Police arrested five persons in connection to the attack. The mob had attacked the African students as they had suspected them of providing drugs to a 17-year-old boy who had died a week ago due to suspected drug overdose.