Toll Staff Beat Up Lawyer; Toll Contract Cancelled [Video]
Each and every day, we hear about an incident at a toll plaza where there is a fight between the toll plaza employees and vehicle owners. However, rarely does it happen that the entire contract of any toll-collecting agency gets cancelled due to their misconduct. Recently, a case has been reported from Barabanki district, Uttar Pradesh, where a lawyer who was beaten up by the toll plaza employees caused it to shut down after other lawyers came in unison.
The video showing the assault of the lawyer at a toll plaza has been shared on Instagram by Legal Vidhya on their channel. It starts off with the view of a few toll gate employees twisting the left arm of the lawyer and continuously slapping him in the face. We can also note that while one man was slapping him, another employee grabbed his other arm and also started hitting him on the head.
Following this, another employee intervenes and stops the assault. However, after this, the other employee starts shouting at him, asking him to say sorry. The next part of this particular video shows that the same toll plaza was visited by a number of lawyers. They can be heard saying that they came to say sorry to the toll plaza employees (in sarcasm). However, there was no one present.
The same clip also shows the same person who was assaulted at the toll booth. He was also sarcastically saying that he has come to apologise, but there is no one to accept his apology. Apart from this video, another video has been shared online in which the group of lawyers was seen protesting and chanting slogans against the toll plaza operators.
What happened was that on Wednesday, January 14, Ratnesh Shukla, a practising advocate associated with the Allahabad High Court, was crossing the Bara (Gotona Bara) Toll Plaza on the Lucknow–Sultanpur Highway (NH-731). Shukla, a resident of Paranpur village in Pratapgarh district, Uttar Pradesh, at the time of the incident, was travelling in his private vehicle to attend work at the Lucknow High Court.
What happened next was that an argument started between the toll plaza employees and Shukla over passing the toll plaza without paying the fee. It was mentioned by toll plaza employees to the police authorities that the same vehicle had allegedly broken through the toll gate on December 30 without paying.
As a result of this, the toll employees then surrounded the lawyer, as seen in the video, chased him near the toll plaza, and physically assaulted him. The attackers continued beating the lawyer even after overpowering him. Following this, the police authorities reached the spot, and the injured lawyer was rescued and shifted to the Community Health Centre (CHC) for medical treatment.
Haidergarh Station House Officer Inspector Abhimanyu Mall confirmed that a case has been registered based on the lawyer’s written complaint, after which the three toll plaza employees who were seen in the video assaulting the lawyer were detained and taken into custody for questioning. These men were identified as Golu, Ravi Verma, and Lavlesh Mishra.
As a result of this incident, 150 lawyers from Lucknow civil courts staged a protest at the High Court and at the Haidergarh toll plaza, which caused the termination of the contract of the user fee collection agency M/s Skylark Infra Engineering Pvt. Ltd. This particular action has been taken by NHAI, and the notice highlighted that it has also debarred the agency from future bids for toll collection and has directed the encashment of the Rs 5.3 crore security amount.