New Delhi: A visually impaired professor has, in a video appeal to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, said that she was recently denied a home in the capital because she is a Muslim.
"I hope no one has to encounter this kind of shameful and inhuman experience...I urge you, our dear paanch saal (five year) chief minister to look into the issue," Reem Shamsuddin said in her two-minute appeal.
The 30-year-old, who teaches English in a Delhi University affiliated college, has alleged that she paid an advance sum on a flat that she wanted to move into with her mother, and had even shifted her luggage when, at the last minute, the landlord refused to give her the keys.
"She denied me the key saying she can't rent her flat to a Muslim. It was shocking. Delhi boasts of a cosmopolitan, metropolitan nature all the time," Ms Shamsuddin said, sharing that she had never experienced "this level of discrimination" while studying in Hyderabad for eight years.
"If I have to face this, what about thousands of students who come from various parts of the country? I believe the state you administer, the Delhi you promised, accommodates every other citizen - Bihari, Bengali, Malayali, Manipuri, Kashmiri, Goan, black, white, man, woman transgender, gay, blind, deaf, homeless..." the professor says.
She tells Mr Kejriwal that when she arrived in Delhi in February last year, "the whole state was booming with promises of AAP, how Delhi will change."
Activist Shehzad Poonawalla has appealed to Mr Kejriwal, the National Commission for Minorities, the home ministry and Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung for immediate action. She has also initiated a #Justice4Reem campaign on social media.