Mumbai: A physically challenged shopkeeper on Tuesday night was attacked with a sword in Chembur area of Mumbai for raising voice against extortionists.
CCTV footage of the incident shows a goon storming into the showroom and slashing Rajnish Singh Thakur (36) alias Bablu twice before a brave customer managed to overpower him.
The shopkeeper has admitted to local hospital with minor injuries on left hand and neck. Manish, Rajnish’s brother, said he would have been killed had the customer, who had come to make a payment, not come to his aid.
Police have arrested four people but two are still absconding.
Goon attacks shopkeeper with sword in Mumbai,customer protects shopkeeper against the attack pic.twitter.com/JGrAr5MnMz
— ANI (@ANI_news) August 13, 2015
According to police officials, as quoted by mid-day.com, for the past several months, a big gang of druggies used to go to nearly 200 shops along the P L Lokhande Marg in Chembur and threaten to attack them, break the glass of the shops and burn them down if they did not fork out money. The scared shop owners used to give them Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,500 each time.
Fed up with the druggies’ activities, Rajnish formed a group of shopkeepers, printed awareness messages with his and his brother’s names and contact numbers and asked people to report the instances to them. Posters were put up and flyers handed out to every shopkeeper, the daily stated.
After they had collected enough evidence, Rajnish led a delegation to the Zonal DCP and informed him about the extortion.
Since Rajnish’s name figured on all the posters, the druggies decided to target him to take revenge. Manish said several attempts were made to assault Rajnish, but none had succeeded until Tuesday night.