LONDON: Three British Hindu men were asked their ethnicity in a London park and, when they replied they were Indian and Sri Lankan, were viciously beaten up in an unprovoked attack by three older men who appeared to be Muslim, it has emerged.Two of the men suffered blows to the head and were left unconscious; all had to go to Northwick Park Hospital. They have all been left with cuts and bruises and two have been left with facial fractures. Tory MP Bob Blackman raised the case in the House of Commons on Thursday, describing it as “religious hatred.”TOI has now tracked down the sister of one of the men, a British Indian Gujarati Hindu, aged 20, a first-year university student studying radiography. It turns out he had gone to Harrow Recreation Ground with two friends on May 30 to play cricket. The friends are British Hindus of Sri Lankan descent, aged 20 and 21.The three of them went to a shop at 6 pm, walking past a café where a group of around eight people were seated. It appeared to be a Muslim family, with some of the women wearing hijabs. They looked back at their other friends playing cricket when one of the men outside the café got up and confronted the three Hindus and asked them why they were looking at his family, his sister told TOI.They replied that they were not looking at his family and were looking at friends playing cricket. Then a slightly older man from the café group came over and asked: “What is your problem? Why are you talking to my brother?” The three men tried to defuse the situation and the two men seemed to accept their answer.They went back to the park and sat on a bench.Around 30 minutes later, three men from the cafe group, in their mid to late 20s, came over and became very aggressive, asking, “Where are you from? Are you Sri Lankan? Are you Indian?”To which one of the Sri Lankan-origin men replied: ”Yes, we are.”The three men then beat them up relentlessly, punching and kicking them until the British Indian and his friend were left lying unconscious on the ground, the sister said.“My brother was wearing a sacred thread from a mandir on his wrist,” the sister said.One of the attackers was wearing a Moroccan football T-shirt with the number 2 and the word “Hakimi”.Police and ambulances arrived and the British Indian was taken to the hospital. The other two had to make their own way there.“My brother is struggling. He feels as if people are looking at him and is ashamed to step out of the house. He has never been involved in a fight before,” the sister told TOI on Friday.“He has just done his first-year exams and was meant to resume his two-week clinical placement the week after the attack and that has been put on hold.” She also said she was unhappy with how the police investigation was progressing, as two weeks later, they still had not examined CCTV footage.The Met Police told TOI they were called to deal with a “fight” and one man was taken to hospital “with a head injury”. “There is no evidence at this time that this attack was racially motivated. Our enquiries into the circumstances continue. No arrests have been made,” a spokesperson said.
