New York City hate crimes detectives are investigating a report that a native of Bangladesh was attacked at a Bronx restaurant.

Abdullah Faruque told police that he stepped outside the Applebee’s to smoke around 11:30 p.m. Monday.

He said several men followed him outside, demanding to know his ethnicity.

Before he was beaten, one of the men, using an obscenity, stated that Faruque was Arab.

Faruque, who grew up in the Bronx, said he went home and contacted police the next day.

Faruque told the New York Post he thinks he was jumped in a knee-jerk reaction to the Boston Marathon bombings, even though no suspect had been identified.

(AP)