CCTV footage shows Samajwadi Party men assaulting the toll plaza attendant
In a brazen display of lawlessness, workers of Uttar Pradesh's ruling Samajwadi Party on Wednesday assaulted a toll plaza attendant on the Lucknow-Faizabad national highway when asked to pay the toll fee.
The incident, at the Raunahi toll plaza on National Highway 28 which is about 20 kilometres away from the Faizabad district border, was captured by CCTVs installed there.
The footage shows men, armed with guns, storming inside the toll control room and arguing with the attendant who was not allowing them to pass without paying the toll.
Soon, they started to slap the attendant repeatedly, assaulted him with the butt of their gun and drove off in their Toyota Fortuner SUV.
"There were five people in the SUV. They used slangs and threatened us with arms... All five of them had arms and they pointed them on me... They started beating us... They said they were Pappu Yadav's aides," said Kranti Kumar Singh, Toll Booth Manager.
The security guard at the toll plaza said the SUV had a flag of the Samajwadi Party on it.
The police too says the men were aides of a local leader Pappu Yadav and action will be taken against them. "We have booked them. We will take action according to the law," said Piyush Ranjan Srivastav, Superintendent of Police, Rural, Raunahi, Uttar Pradesh.
Samajwadi Party workers are infamous for skipping toll booth on state and national highways.
At a time when the SP-led Uttar Pradesh government has come under pressure for not having control over the law and order situation in the state, such an act by some of their own workers will certainly put pressure on their reputation once again.