Mob attacks foreign students for offering namaz inside Gujarat hostel, injures 5

State Home Minister Harsh Sanghavi has spoken to Gujarat's top police officers and directed them to arrest the accused at the earliest and ensure a fair probe.

The victim students said that since there is no mosque on the campus, so they had gathered inside the hostel to offer taraweeh - a namaz offered at night during Ramadan.

Soon after, a mob armed with sticks and knives stormed the hostel, attacked them, and vandalised their rooms, the students have alleged.

According to students, the hostel's security guard tried to stop the mob but failed.

A student from Afghanistan said people in the mob raised slogans and asked them who had allowed them to offer namaz in the hostel. "They attacked us inside the rooms too. They broke laptops, phones and damaged bikes," he said.

The five injured students include one each from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Turkmenistan and two from African countries.

Visuals shared on social media showed damaged bikes, broken laptops and ravaged rooms.

In some of the visuals, people are seen throwing stones at the hostel and hurling abuses at the overseas students. In the visuals, the international students are heard saying that they are "scared" and that "this is unacceptable".