Australian police officer’s ‘perverts’ remark against Indian driver sparks outrage

2026.03.18 09:20 Police officers patrol the Valley Mall in Brisbane. Photo: AFP Distrust in Australian police among Queensland’s Indian diaspora is set to deepen after an officer was caught on body camera hurling expletives at an Uber driver, leading the victim to sue the force in federal court. The officer said, “fg Indians, mate, they are a bunch of fg perverts” to a colleague in 2023, before they charged the man with committing an indecent act for allegedly masturbating in public, court records showed. A court later quashed the charges because two witnesses failed to appear. The man subsequently filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against Queensland police. The department said the footage was recorded accidentally and denied that any of the officers’ actions were motivated by “race”, “colour” or “national ethnic origin”. However, that argument failed to convince Australia’s race discrimination commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman, who called the officer’s comments “clearly a racist statement”. “I think the Indian community would be very distressed,” Sivaraman said, as quoted by The Guardian. “We know that migrant communities are sometimes reluctant to engage with the police because they feel that they won’t be heard, that they won’t be believed, that they’re not represented,” he said. Members of the local Indian community in Sydney listen to a speech by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi at an event in the city in 2023. Photo: AFP The official added that “this kind of incident will just perpetuate that harm and it just means that the work for police to be trusted, that just gets harder”. He urged the Australian police to boost efforts to eradicate racism and demanded disciplinary action against the two officers. Sivaraman said the recommendations in the Human Rights Commission’s national anti-racism framework, which include developing racial literacy within the country’s law enforcement, had not been implemented by any police department in Australia. A

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