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A Brooklyn woman has been arrested on hate crime charges over a disturbing viral video showing hot coffee and a phone being thrown at a presidential campaign staffer wearing a Palestinian scarf while with his toddler son in a playground.
Hadasa Bozakkaravani, 48, was taken into custody Tuesday and hit with four hate crime counts, along with others for assault, assault of a person under 11, reckless endangerment, aggravated harassment and menacing, the NYPD said.
Bozakkaravani’s arrest came nearly two weeks after a video went viral of a vile attack in Fort Greene on Nov. 7, which was exactly a month after Hamas terrorists slaughtered Israelis.
It shows a woman confronting Ashish Prashar, 40, a London-born press secretary who has worked for former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson as well as the successful campaigns of both President Biden in 2020 and Barack Obama in 2008.
The Indian American dad said he was attacked for wearing a keffiyeh — a traditional black-and-white Arab scarf — while at the basketball court at Edmonds Playground on Dekalb Avenue with his 18-month-old son.
“I think it was the keffiyeh and the color of my skin [that triggered her],” Prashar told The Post Thursday, saying that the woman, whom he had never seen before, asked him out of the blue if he supported Hamas.
He recalled her telling him “You and your son are terrorists” — and, “Get out of here. You don’t belong here.”
The married dad-of-one also claimed that Bozakkaravani identified herself to him as a Jewish-American and said, “All Arab people are dogs,” in a verbal assault that he said left him “gobsmacked.”
Prashar — a former reporter with UK newspaper The Sun — said he stepped away from the woman and tried to “de-escalate” the situation by pulling out his cellphone and recording her, thinking that she would hesitate to act violently on camera.
Instead, it seemed to rile her up even more, he said.
“She storms towards us and I am holding my son in my arms,” Prashar recounted. “She throws her phone at us. I duck.”
Prashar quickly put his son down and positioned him behind his legs. A moment later, he said he saw the woman’s hot coffee flying at him.
He said the paper cup “clipped” him and a bit of the liquid splattered, but not enough to cause burns.
Prashar said he suffered some scrapes from being struck by the unhinged attacker in her attempt to wrestle away his phone.
When an onlooker walked up to check on Prashar and his son, the woman grabbed the boy she was with and left.
It was initially reported that Bozakkaravani was the other child’s mom, but Prashar said it is now believed she was the nanny.
She appeared irked by Prashar’s son toddling over to where the older boy in her care was shooting hoops and trying to interact with him, he said.
“He gave my son the ball, and it was really, really cute,” Prashar recalled — before the woman with the other boy got up from a nearby bench and accosted him and his son, repeatedly telling them: “get away from us.”
Following the hot coffee attack, the dad said: “I was holding my son in my arms and telling him I loved him.”
Prashar previously gave a TEDx talk about “the radical power of second chances,” detailing how he was given a second chance to become a reporter after spending time in jail for theft as a teen.
After working for The Sun, he turned to politics, serving as a press secretary for Johnson during his time as the mayor of London, and worked for former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Africa Governance Initiative in Sierra Leone — and the West Bank.
After moving to the US, he worked on Obama’s first presidential campaign in 2008 as a junior member of his communications team in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and Biden’s White House victory in 2020 as a liaison with Muslim communities.
“I have a complicated relationship with Biden,” Prashar admitted. “I do blame him for some of the things happening right now.”
He accused the president and his fellow Democrats, Mayor Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul, of dehumanizing Palestinians and making people “pick sides.”
“They have made every brown person in the city a target, and President Biden is responsible for that because he’s made it so binary,” Prashar reckoned.
Most recently, he was the global chief marketing officer for the New York-based ad agency R/GA. He currently works as a political strategist and adviser on local campaigns.
Prashar, who has been a vocal supporter of Palestinian rights, said he received the Arab scarf as a gift from a Christian Palestinian more than a decade ago while working on the peace process in the West Bank.
He said he has been wearing the cherished accessory “religiously” ever since, and until earlier this month no one had ever taken issue with it.
He credited the diverse Fort Greene community with being the “driving force” behind Bozakkaravani’s surrender by swiftly helping identify – yet it took the NYPD nearly two weeks to collar her.
“Honestly, they probably could have made the arrest quicker,” he said, noting that he realizes the NYPD is currently “stretched” due to the protests and counter-protests surrounding the Israel-Hamas war. “They knew exactly where she is. If they wanted to, they could have gone in and got her.”
Bozakkaravani pleaded not guilty to all nine charges against her and was freed on her own recognizance, reported NBC News.
“I don’t think it’s the right decision,” Prashar said of the suspect’s release. “She is willing to attack a child and didn’t care of the consequences. Who’s to say she won’t do it again. I think the judge made a horrible decision.
“Your goal should be to protect our children… She was willing to burn a child on the playground,” he added. “The person is not fit to be on the streets right now.”
But Prashar added that he hopes the woman, who he said “traumatized a whole community” with her violent actions, “can get some help.”
“I believe all of us need to heal, including this individual,” he said.
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