A group of Bangladeshi journalists, who went to India to cover the T20 World Cup, said a number of residential hotels in Mumbai refused to accommodate them because of their nationality.
“You from Bangladesh? Sorry, no Bangladeshi passport is allowed in our hotel. There's no government permission,” banglanews24.com quoted managers of Hotel Sea Green and Sea Green South as telling the 10 newsmen on Tuesday.
Other hotels blatantly refused to let the scribes stay.
“A hotel told us that local police had issued restrictions on accommodating several nationalities, including Bangladeshis,” one of the journalists was quoted as saying by channelionline.
“Sorry we can't accommodate you because you are from Bangladesh,” another hotel manager angrily told them, according to banglanews24.
A journalist said they were turned down by 19 hotels that day and all of them cited the same reason – nationality.
Bangladesh and India share close historical and cultural ties and the neighbours celebrate the bond regularly through various programmes.
“We were told to go to the Muslim-dominated neighbourhood of Dongri where Hotel Jamjam and Hotel Shadab accommodate Bangladeshis,” channelionline quoted a journalist as saying.
“But more frustration was waiting for us. The hotels said their foreign guests have to fill-up forms provided by the CID. We were shown the door saying they did not have any forms left. We presumed that they did not want us to stay there.”
After a daylong frantic search, the journalists finally found a hotel near Mohammad Ali Road's Minara Mosque in the afternoon which agreed to accommodate them.
