By Omar Rashid
New Delhi: It was meant to be a routine late-night food delivery assignment for Mohammad Aslam. But it turned out to be a horror for him as four men allegedly assaulted him, subjected him to communal slurs, poured liquor over him and held him hostage for over an hour in a single-storey house in Uttar Pradesh’s capital Lucknow.
Aslam has alleged that he was targeted over his Muslim identity and beaten up by the residents of a house where he had gone to deliver food late on the intervening night of August 20 and 21.
Police lodged a criminal case based on Aslam’s complaint and have so far arrested one of the four accused persons.
Aslam works as a food delivery agent with Zomato. On the night of August 20, he received two orders, one of which was to a location in the Vineet Khand locality of Lucknow’s Gomti Nagar area. Upon reaching the location, Aslam said he asked the resident customer to come down to the gate and pick up his order.
But, Aslam said, the man on the other end of the phone asked him to come up to the first floor. “I refused initially because I had another delivery to make. But then he told me that he was eating and couldn’t come down. Out of humanity, I decided to climb up and hand over the parcel to him,” Aslam told The Wire.
When he reached the first floor, Aslam said one of the men berated him for their earlier telephonic conversation when he refused to come up initially. The four men were drinking, recalled Aslam.
Things turned hostile as one of them allegedly pulled him by his collar and dragged him inside the house. Aslam alleged that the men hit him and quizzed him about his identity.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.