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Dissed by Trainer, Brit Indian Studies Law & Wins Case Against Gym

The Indian-origin man, who is autistic, successfully sued Richard Branson’s Virgin Active gym chain

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Hindi Female

Meet Ketan Aggarwal, an India-origin man living in London, who has more than one reason to be very proud of himself.

Two years ago, he was attending a spin class at his gym. He pointed out to the instructor that the music was too slow to exercise to. Incidentally, the person working out next to him also felt the same.

The instructor, however, picked on Aggarwal and called him “stupid”.

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The humiliation didn’t stop there. The instructor called him names and told him to “improve” his music standards if he felt this was slow, reported Daily Mail. Aggarwal was dejected and spoke with the gym authorities about the instructor’s behaviour. However, the plea fell on deaf ears.

30-year-old Aggarwal is autistic. His brush with being singled out was not new. In this encounter, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He began studying law so that he could sue the company, Virgin Active. Virgin Active is a part of Richard Branson’s Virgin group.

Aggarwal spent years studying precedents and rules on discrimination by borrowing law books from the library and perusing the internet to represent himself in court and successfully argue that he had been a victim of disability harassment. The court ordered Virgin Active to pay him £1,200, as well as costs of £190, to give a written apology and to train its staff. Aggarwal told Dail Mail:

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Calling someone with a mental disability ‘stupid’ is similar to mocking a guy in a wheelchair. If I was that stupid I wouldn’t have been able to successfully pursue the claim against a solicitor of a billion-pound company.

(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)

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Topics:  Autism   Richard Branson 

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