Gurgaon:
A group of men allegedly armed with chains, iron rods and hockey sticks assaulted staff and stole nearly two lakhs from a toll booth near Delhi on Monday night.
The brazen hooliganism, which took place on the outskirts of 'millennium city' Gurgaon, was captured on a CCTV camera but three days after the incident, the police are yet to arrest anyone.
Workers at the toll plaza also allege that as the attackers took their time beating the staff and ransacking the booth, the police didn't react to their SOS fast enough and arrived only after the men were long gone.
It started with two bikers attacking the workers at the Wazirpur toll plaza for commercial vehicles. Around a dozen men came 30 minutes later, the first batch on a bike and the second lot in a black Scorpio with a beacon and a politician's poster on it.
The attackers can be seen clearly in the CCTV footage, punching and kicking the attendants, vandalizing the booth and taking cash, which turned out to be the day's earnings of Rs 1.85 lakh.
"They started beating us without provocation with belts and rods. They clearly came with the intention of looting the toll booth," said Lakshmikant Sharma, who is in charge of the toll plaza.
Mr Sharma alleged that when he called the police, their first response was to threaten to book him if the complaint was false. "I had to plead with the police to come," he said.
The police say they have identified some of the men, but haven't found them. Faced with blatant lawlessness on their watch, they blamed the incident on local troublemakers who didn't want to pay toll.
"There are frequent brawls as villagers who live nearby believe they should be excused from toll," said Gurgaon Commissioner of Police Alok Mittal. He denied any delay in police response.
This is not the first such attack in Gurgaon, which has six toll plazas. In 2011, a toll plaza worker was shot dead, allegedly by two men from a nearby village, for asking for Rs 27 toll fee.