“I don’t know sir. Shayad, amiri ka ghamand hoga (Maybe, it's the vanity of being rich),” said 22-year-old Sachin Rana, a security guard at Noida's Cleo County housing society who was recently in the news after he was slapped by a woman resident.
In a video of the incident that went viral on social media on 10 September, 38-year-old Sutupa Das could be seen slapping Rana for an alleged 'delay' in opening the gate.
Rana told The Quint that the supposed delay was of only "three seconds."
The woman, a professor in Delhi University, was arrested after Rana filed a police complaint against her. She later got bail.
A video of the incident had also gone viral.
‘Had Previously Hit Our Security Officer'
Explaining how the incident occurred, Rana said, “Cars have an RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) number, after which the boom barriers are automatically lifted. However, her ID didn’t work. She just had to wait for three seconds before we opened the barriers manually.”
In an attempt to decipher the woman's anger, Rana, who has a year-old son, said, “She was already on the phone and because the barriers didn’t open, she probably had to pull the breaks.”
On being asked if Das had ever had an incident like this before, Rana said, “Yes, our senior – security officer (SO) SK Rai – she had hit him as well. This happened two months ago.”
The Station House Officer of Phase 3 police station, Vijay Kumar, said that a case had been registered against the woman under Section 151 (causing disturbance) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
“Since the offence is bailable, she was granted bail,” he said, according to The Indian Express.
Rana, who earns around Rs 15,000 a month, has been working in Noida’s Cleo County society for around two years. Before that, he used to work in a finance company in Roorkee in Uttarakhand.
The Quint asked if there was any difference in the two places. To this, Rana said, “Yes, we used to get respected there. Not that all the people are bad here. 90 percent of them are nice here also and believe us to be equals.”
High-Rise in Cases of Entitlement
Just last month, a resident of a high-rise society in Gurugram was arrested for thrashing and hurling expletives at a security guard and a lift operator, after he was briefly stuck in a lift on 29 August.
The rise in such instances brings out not just the widening disparities in our societies, but further exposes the sense of entitlement that the residents of coming-up neighbourhoods seem to enjoy.
The Quint had spoken to the security guard from Gurugram as well. 48-year-old Ashok Kumar had said, "Kyunki unke paas paisa hai, unko ghamand ho raha tha. Unnhone socha hoga, 'Yeh chhote log mera kya bigaad lenge?' (He has money and pride, and must have thought, 'What could these poor people do to me?').”
Days before that, Bhavya Roy, 32, was arrested on 21 August, after her video abusing and manhandling the security guards of a Noida society went viral. She was granted bail by a local court on 24 August.
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