A 22-year-old man was thrashed allegedly by five men for speaking with his friend in fluent English while dropping him off at a five-star hotel in Lutyens’ Delhi, police said on Monday.

The incident was reported in the early hours of Saturday, they said. Three people have been arrested in this connection, they added. According to the police, Varun Gulati, a resident of Noida, had come to the five-star hotel in Connaught Place to drop off his friend Aman in his friend Daksh’s car.

While Gulati was walking back to the hotel after seeing off Daksh, a group of five men, who were inebriated, rounded him up. They asked him why was he speaking in English, they said. Both the sides got into an argument and the men assaulted Gulati, police said.

The assailants fled the spot in a vehicle but the victim managed to note down the number of the vehicle, they said. On the basis of the number plate, three of the accused were identified and arrested, police said, adding a hunt is on to trace the rest.

Similar incident happened at Karnataka when a techie was badly thrashed for speaking in English. Karnataka is fiercely protective about its language –Kannada. J Daniel learnt it the hard way. The 36-year-old software engineer was chased and allegedly beaten up by a mob of 50 Karnataka Rakshana Vedhike (KRV) activists - because he spoke in English.

Daniel was trying to sort out an altercation between while trying to broker peace between the mob and an event organizer who was playing non-Kannada music at Swami Vivekananda Road metro station last Saturday at around 9 pm.

According to a report, when Daniel intervened, one of the activists, Manjunath, allegedly beat him on his back and head for speaking English. In retaliation, the techie is alleged to have beaten up Manjunath. The situation then escalated from there on as the mob was almost close to stripping him in public. He sustained injuries and was bleeding from the nose.