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| The shopping mall at Saheed Nagar. Telegraph picture |
Bhubaneswar, March 14: Four persons, including two women, allegedly manhandled a female employee of a shop located at a mall in Saheed Nagar and fled with a stone necklace worth Rs 4,000, police said today.
The incident took place around 9pm yesterday when the four went to the shop and demanded the exchange of a stone necklace that they had bought from the shop around four months ago. When the shop attendant, a 22-year-old woman, refused saying the product did not have a guarantee and hence could not be exchanged, they started abusing her and pushed her around, said the police.
“The attendant refused to exchange the necklace saying that there was no guarantee on the item. All of a sudden, they started abusing her and even manhandled her. She rang me up immediately but by the time I reached the shop, the group had fled with another stone necklace,” said Sangita Mohapatra, owner of the shop who later registered a complaint with the Saheed Nagar police.
She has also provided CCTV footage of the incident.
Mohapatra said though the saleswoman had shouted for help, none of the private security guards deployed in the mall came to her rescue. “Though a number of other customers were also present in the shop at the time, no one protested,” she said.
“A case under sections 448 (punishment for house trespass), 294 (obscene act) and 34 (crime done by more than one person) of Indian Penal Code has been registered. We have started investigation on the basis of the CCTV footage,” said inspector in charge of Saheed Nagar Police station Deepak Kumar Mishra.
The incident has exposed the lack of willingness on part of private security guards to take on anti-social elements visiting the mall. At a meeting in November last year, police commissioner R.P. Sharma had asked mall owners of the city to deploy adequate private security guards to prevent cases of eve teasing and other offences taking place at such busy places.
“If the shopkeepers are not provided with adequate security, how can customers feel secure in malls?” said Rabi Narayan Dalai, a shopper.
