Body of lynched Indian is flown in from Uganda

AHMEDABAD: The body of Devang Rawal, 25, who was lynched in Kampala, Uganda on Thursday during anti-Indian riots, was brought here on Sunday night. Even as hundreds turned up at the airport and at the Naroda residence of this salesman whose wedding was fixed on May 15, his father Shailesh Rawal was furious that the government never informed them of the death or even when the body was being brought.

“There was no communication at all from the state or Centre. We came to know about Devang’s death through our own contacts,” he said. Blaming the government for not providing protection to expat Indians he said,

“There is no security for people who go out of the country to work”, said a retired mill worker Shailesh.  

Devang was reportedly lynched by a mob of protestors in the Ugandan capital while he was being interviewed by a local journalist.

He had been in the African country for over two years and his entire family was busy with the marriage preparations when they received the news of his death.  The protestors in Kampala were opposing efforts by the Mehta Group, which has interests in cotton, sugarcane, textiles, tea and coffee plantations, engineering, floriculture, management and finance, to acquire 7,000 hectares of rainforest near the Ugandan capital for sugarcane cultivation.

Thursday's mob attack saw Indians being dragged off motorbikes and beaten, their shops looted and a Hindu temple attacked. The attack revived bitter memories of virulent anti-India bashing by former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin who expelled nearly 75,000 Asians in 1972.

With inputs from Agencies