In a shocking incident, an American woman verbally and physically assaulted a female Muslim doctor in a burqa in Pune. A non-cognisable offence was registered against the American. According to reports, this is not the first time she did something like this.
The 43-year-old woman, identified as Jaime Lynn Lewis, had allegedly walked up to the victim, Dr Qaseema Khan, and asked if she was a Muslim. When Dr Khan answered in the affirmative, Lynn began abusing her and went on to physically assault her. Dr Khan had filed a complaint against Lynn following the incident.
The woman was taken to the Lashkar police station and she began abusing the policemen and when she spoke to officials at the US embassy over the phone, she began abusing them too. The police soon found out that she was mentally disturbed and was on prescription pills.
"We have checked her records and found that she is on prescription drugs and is taking treatment. When we called the embassy while she was here, she started abusing us as well as the embassy officials," AP Suryavanshi, assistant police inspector at Lashkar police station was quoted as saying by Hindustan Times.
The police also found out that Lynn was living in a house owned by a Muslim man, Asif Ali Khan. She has been living there since April with the man on a tourist visa. "She is friends with the Muslim owner of the house and has been in India on a tourist visa since April 17. She had been to Pune three years ago as well and had lived in the same house," AP Suryavanshi said.
The main aim of the police is to get the woman deported back to the US. "The matter seems like it is a 'hate crime', but it is not. She seems to suffer from a mental condition," Chandrakant Bhosale senior police inspector at Lashkar police station said.
This is not the woman's first offence. In a similar incident, On August 24, Lynn had confronted two girls going to college and asked them if they were Muslim and when they said yes, she began verbally abusing them.
"I was wearing a headscarf and my friend was wearing a burqa. We were crossing the road near Dastur school when she came running in our direction and started trying to hit us. She tried to kick us as well. We had just stepped out of college for lunch. We were not in a mindset to handle this at all. Some people interfered but were hesitant to touch her as she was a foreigner and then she went inside Clover Centre," one of the girls, Shafaq Shaikh said.
The girls approached the Bund Garden police station and filed a case against an unidentified woman. They knew the identity of the woman only after information of the recent incident surfaced.
