Kherki toll plaza lists 105 incidents of assault on employees since Jan ’15

The job of a toll employee has become so risky that no one wants to enter this simple profession of collecting tolls from citizens. The Kherki Daula toll plaza reports a total of 105 incidents of assaults against its employees. One such incident was recorded on the CCTV footage, which showed a man being bashed up with sticks by seven men. 

All these incidents have been recorded since January 2015. Out of these, police complaints were filed in at least 57 cases and 16 FIRs were lodged. However, this didn’t stop the offenders from misbehaving with the toll employees. 

In a recent incident, a toll employee was brutally beaten  up by seven men on August 18. The assaulters brutally thrashed Sitaram Singh, a booth operator, and they also damaged the toll plaza property to a certain extent. This was only because the operator had asked the assaulters to pay the fixed fee for the toll. This incident had happened around 6:20 pm. Fortunately, Singh didn’t face any major injuries but an FIR was lodged. 

In another incident on August 31, a pistol was raised on Dharmender Kumar, another employee at 

around 4:30 pm for demanding the toll fee. Such incidents have raised concerns over the security provisions available at the toll plaza. 

According to a residential law, those living in 5 km radius of the plaza are exempted from paying the fee. This is confirmed by showing their address proofs at the toll plaza to the booth collector. 

Sources have revealed that majority of these cases happen because people feel offended when they are asked to pay the toll fee or show their documents for exemption. In this regard, there have been many incidents where people have provided fake documents to save themselves from paying a small amount as toll fee. 

“We had sought a list of vehicles from the transport authority and had issued exemption tags to genuine commuters. But because we face 15-20 such cases every day so we decided to close the free pass in August,” said T C Rao, chairman and managing director of Skylark Security Pvt Ltd. 

To improve the security provisions at the toll plaza, Punjab and Haryana high courts have ordered that police should be deployed at the booths. As a result, the district police deployed 50 cops at the stretch from February to May this year but this was not regularised. 

Meanwhile, the incidents have been continuing unabated. The contractor didn’t pay the outstanding amount to Gurgaon Police and the <g data-gr-id="41">toll</g> contractor asked for the securities to be called off. 

“For a private enterprise, if we have to deploy forces, we need to focus on them. To maintain law and order in one zone, we can’t compromise on other areas just for one spot. Moreover, they gave us in writing that they do not want our services,” Navdeep Singh Virk, Police Commissioner, Gurgaon, told Millennium Post.