From left Deepak Bhatt, Uday Kusupati and Akshit Goyal

Three IITians, Uday Kusupati from IIT Bombay, and Deepak Bhatt and Akshit Goyal from IIT Delhi, had never imagined that their first brush with a foreign land would be so harrowing. They were detained in Italy, while en route for their internship at INRIA Sophia Antipolis, France. Despite having proper visa and documentation, these students were arrested under the name of passport verification. Here is what Akshit Goyal had to say about the entire experience. 

“Being a 20-year-old sophomore of IIT Delhi, I am too naïve to gauge the magnitude or nature of an attack to be termed or classified as ‘racist’, but I believe it was an attack on a person’s dignity. The frightening incident was a blatant disrespect towards self-identity in a contemporary world of which we are or aspire to be part of. The Italian consul general says, “Italians are not racists”, but then, on the contrary, they justify traumatising a group of innocent young students. We had valid visas, passports and student I-cards of both the nations.

We were crying and pleading just to be heard once before being detained.It was 8.30 am, and we had just alighted from the train at Ventimiglia (Italy) when about 25 police officers greeted us. We had all the proper documents but were still detained. All our belongings were taken away. We couldn’t contact anyone. To all our questions, they had just one reply “No Problem.” We were taken to multiple locations. All our actions were recorded. They took our photographs and fingerprints as if we were hardcore criminals. There were others like us who had no idea about what was happening to them. After a day full of such atrocities, we were in a state of trauma. Others who held with us were Pakistanis and Africans. It apparently seemed an act of racial profiling.In a foreign land, with no friends or family around, actions like these caused fear, panic and anxiety in us. The notion of being convicted for reasons not known is a terrifying one. And for all of us, it was a scary experience.

I understand that unrest is gripping the nations across Europe, and it has made the countries beef up their security systems, but in all fairness should this have implications on an entire community and especially on students, who were there solely for knowledge sharing through educational institutes across the globe?In hindsight, what saddens me is not the trauma and nightmare that my friends and I had to go through, but the idea behind this unlawful incident. Unfortunately, this hostile and adamant generalisation, and attack based on verboten assumption clouds the definition and essence of racism. While this experience has left me petrified, I still believe I am lucky that my family is computer-savvy and could access the Internet and reach out to several people. My family reached out to the Indian Embassy, helpline numbers, professors, etc., and sought timely help. However, what concerns me is that many students of our country’s premier institutions come from the rural and orthodox background and whose families don’t have this reach and contemporary skill sets. If only I came from one such family, I could have been lost to another country forever, as a refugee for life!

PaGaLGuY

also has a copy of the letter the students wrote addressing the Indian Embassy, drawing attention to the plight of the students.