A man on a bicycle returning home with his daughter from her school was allegedly beaten up and hit on the head by an autorickshaw driver on Friday afternoon on Prince Anwar Shah Road.
Subrata Bera alleged he had protested when the autorickshaw hit his bicycle from behind. When he proceeded to lodge a police complaint, the auto driver allegedly picked up a brick and hit his head from behind.
The incident took place around 12.30pm on Friday.
The auto was from the Rabindra Sarobar-Jadavpur police station route along Prince Anwar Shah Road.
The police have started a probe based on Bera’s complaint.
Till Saturday evening, the autorickshaw driver remained untraced, an officer said.
Bera said his little daughter fell when the autorickshaw hit his bicycle from behind
and he stopped to protest, asking why he was driving recklessly.
“When the driver stopped at a traffic signal, I went and asked him if this was the way to drive an autorickshaw? What would have happened if my daughter had been seriously injured?” police officers quoted Bera as saying.
A resident of Selimpur, Bera does odd jobs in a private company and brings his daughter home from school every day on his bicycle.
“When I asked the driver these questions, he stopped the vehicle, asked the passengers to get off and then attacked me. I resisted and a clash followed,” Bera told officers at Lake police station.
Onlookers who had gathered at the site close to South City Mall asked Bera to lodge a police complaint since the autorickshaw driver had first attacked him, the man in his 40s told the police.
“When I was heading towards the police station, the driver suddenly picked up a piece of brick and hit my head from behind. I sat down with blood oozing out,” Bera is said to have told the police.
A case of grievous hurt was drawn up based on Bera’s complaint.
Officers probing the incident said over 150 autos operate on the Rabindra Sarobar-Jadavpur police station route, one of the more lucrative ones in the area.
Passengers getting off at the Rabindra Sarobar Metro station and headed towards Jadavpur police station prefer autorickshaws of this route.
“We are in the process of collecting CCTV footage and have spoken to some of the drivers of the route. It appears that he didn’t return to ply the autorickshaw since Friday afternoon,” said a senior police officer.
Earlier in August, the police had arrested three autorickshaw drivers for allegedly assaulting a passenger after he protested when each of them refused to offer
a ride from Ultadanga to Webel crossing in Salt Lake’s Sector V.