3 IITians endure 10-hour 'racial profiling' in Italy

MUMBAI: Three IITians, one from IIT Bombay and two from IIT Delhi , currently enrolled in their sophomore years, were waiting to take a connecting train from Ventimiglia, were rounded up by local Italian security for passport verification on Monday. Though they were holding their identity papers, the three were flown 1,100km down south to Bari with several other people of varied nationalities, many of whom were not carrying their passports.Terming this a case of “blatant racial profiling“, students from the campuses have condemned the act of the Italian authorities.The three students, all pursuing computer science, who are interning with Inria Sophia Antipolis-Méditerranée since early May, had travelled to the port city of Genoa for the weekend.Uday Kusupati, from IIT Bombay, and Akshit Goyal and Deepak Bhatt from IIT Delhi, have now submitted a detailed letter about their experience to the Indian embassy there and are now in Rome. They will be flown down to Nice, France, on Wednesday morning. Italian consul general Ugo Ciarlatani said, “The only thing I can tell you is that Italians are not racists at all as you can see with the huge numbers of Syrians coming to Italy everyday.“The panic started when the local Italian security clamped down on people at the Ventimiglia station.“While the security guards could not speak English, all these three students tried to show their passports but were taken away,“ said Shreerang Javadekar, editor of the on-campus Insight magazine.The trio, along with some other Africans and Pakistanis, was flown to Bari, Italy, on a flight. “There they managed to contact their families and Indian colleagues followed by around 10 hours of no contact whatsoever. The authorities and their professor guides were contacted by the families and at 10:30pm IST, they were informed that a “passport verification“ was under way . Personnel from the Indian embassy finally intervened and defused the situation,“ added Javadekar.“No reason was given for being flown to Bari. They said their IDs would be checked only in Bari. Uday contacted me and our family and their intern colleagues in France. The colleagues and professors helped out by contacting the embassy,“ said a family member.A dean said that students need to carry their passports or a copy of the same at all times in Europe.Officials from the Indian embassy calmed the family members who were worried about their sons. They were taken to Rome and will be flown back to Nice at the Italian government's expense. Students are planning to file a complaint for the “uncalled for“ trouble.