Noida: A tenant at a society in Sector 74 and her friend were taken into custody for allegedly assaulting maintenance staff during a dispute over a power outage and the lack of a diesel generator (DG) power connection.The pair entered the society’s maintenance office and created a disturbance, police said. CCTV footage purportedly shows them repeatedly slapping a staff member, identified as Kamal, while also misbehaving with other employees who tried to intervene.The incident occurred around 3am on Saturday at Supertech Cape Town. The tenant, Jyoti Mishra, and her friend Amit came home around midnight and found that there was an outage. The DG backup was not working at their flat. So they went down to the maintenance office in the basement of her tower. She found Kamal Singh manning the night desk. Several residents had gathered in the office to complain about the same issue.A 75-second video clip that has since been widely circulated on social media shows Jyoti and Amit arguing with Kamal. At one point, Amit is seen restraining Kamal as Jyoti begins to hit him on his head and shoulder. Some men move forward and try to diffuse the matter. The duo continues to argue with Kamal and she hits Kamal a couple of times more before leaving the spot.The incident created tension within the society and prompted other staff members to alert the police. A team from Sector 113 police station reached the spot and initiated an inquiry into the matter.Assistant commissioner of police Rakesh Pratap Singh said the police took cognisance of the incident. Jyoti Mishra and Amit were taken under preventive detention on Saturday and produced before a court.Former AOA president of the society Arun Sharma told TOI that the builder’s maintenance agency had recently stopped supplying DG back-ups to nearly 100 flats that did not sign up for it at the time of possession. When Jyoti Mishra had gone down to the office on Saturday, Kamal Singh had told her that their flat owner had not taken DG backup, hence the supply was not extended to their flat. This allegedly angered her and she assaulted Kamal Singh. “She even tried to set fire to some files at the maintenance office in a fit of rage,” he said.“Mishra’s flat owner has been sent a notice to vacate the flat and a penalty of Rs 50,000 has been levied on her for disrupting essential services late at night, as helpdesk staff were engaged in the incident and got held up,” AOA president Praveen Bharadwaj said.Mishra, on the other hand, has blamed her actions on the crude behaviour of the maintenance person, Kamal Singh. She told TOI that she had tried to contact the maintenance officer for a similar issue on June 17 as well. When she was not able to access the power meter balance app on her phone, she had to go to the office. Kamal Singh, who was manning the night desk as usual, had commented on her clothing. She had called the cops on him but by the time police arrived at 2 am, Singh had left and his phone was switched off.On Saturday night, when Mishra went to the office, she claimed that Singh had made lewd gestures toward her. “He came around and started misbehaving. He said he was going to the toilet and started putting his hand near his crotch and gesturing at me. This was uncalled for, and I slapped him many times as I had lost my cool by then. I have lived in this society for the last four and a half years and have never felt so unsafe in my society before,” she said and denies setting any file on fire.
