- Tuesday, April 22, 2025
amana Nagumalli and his wife Radhika Kulkarni, who hail from India, was in possession of camera footage showing youths kicking their house’s main door and calling them ‘kafir’.
By: Shubham Ghosh
A HINDU family in the UK have said that they are afraid to get out of their home after facing what they believe to be hate crime driven by race and religion.
According to a report by the BBC, Ramana Nagumalli and his wife Radhika Kulkarni, who hail from India, was in possession of camera footage showing youths kicking their house’s main door and calling them “kafir”, a derogatory term used to target someone on the basis of religion.
Kulkarni told the news outlet that they were shivering, and she was crying and could not sleep. She said they had not done anything to anybody and asked why such hate was rampant.
West Midlands Police told the couple in an email that the youths had admitted to the harassment and were remorseful. However, they also added that there was not adequate evidence to see it as a racially aggravated crime, the report added.
The couple, who are also parents to an eight-year-old girl, have reported harassment to the police on as many as five occasions in July this year. On one occasion, they were surrounded by a group of youngsters outside a local leisure centre and the experience left them deeply traumatised.
Kulkarni said the youths grabbed them and formed a circle around them. She held her daughter’s hand and ran away. Nagumalli said the youths wanted to punch him and fight with him. The Indian duo said the experience had left them, along with their daughter, having nightmares and panic attacks, the BBC report added.
The police said a “detailed” probe had been undertaken, including speaking to the victims and the youths who are responsible for the offences.
“The parents of the young people were supportive of police action and we are satisfied that a community resolution was the correct step to take given the young age of the people involved and their history of non-offending,” the BBC reported quoted a police source as saying.
A community resolution refers to an out-of-court resolution preferred for low-level offences.
The Indian family, however, rejected it saying the lawmakers should have brought charges for hate crime.
Number of recorded hate crimes in the West Midlands Police force area has sharply risen in recent years.
While 2,531 hate crimes were recorded in 2011-12, they went up to 8,897, a 251 per cent rise, in 2022-23, according to the home office.
Recorded religious hate crimes also saw a massive jump by nearly 1,500 per cent in the same period — from 52 to 828.
The Indian family said they wanted the police to take suspected hate crime with a bigger concern so that other people did not go through the same.
