New Delhi: A Zomato delivery personnel in Bangalore was suspended on Wednesday for allegedly assaulting a city- based model and makeup artist for complaining against him over late delivery of food. However, the delivery man has said that it was in fact the woman who misbehaved with him, and the injuries on her nose were inflicted by her own ring.Kamaraj was arrested shortly after Hitesha Chandranee took to Twitter to air her woes and tagged the city police, who asked her to provide the area details to assist her further. He has been charged under Indian Penal Code sections 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace) and 325 (voluntarily causing grievous harm), Bangalore Mirror reported. He has been let out on bail.The model said she lodged a complaint with the Zomato customer care asking them to either deliver food free of cost or cancel the order after it was delayed on Tuesday.“So guys, my Zomato order was late and I was talking to the customer care executive and meanwhile the delivery person just did this,” said Chandranee, crying and showing her bleeding nose in a selfie video, which was aired by some TV channels. She claimed that the delivery personnel punched her in the nose when she asked why the food is late.Zomato reacted to her twitter post, saying, “We can assure you this is not the experience our delivery universe stands for. Our local representative shall be in touch with you shortly to help you with the police investigation along with assistance on the medical care required.”Stating that they were sorry for the incident, the food delivery company tweeted: “Rest assured we’ll take necessary actions to prevent such incidents from happening in the future.”However, a report in The News Minute quotes Kamaraj as saying that Chandranee’s allegations are false, and she verbally abused and threw chappals at him. “After I reached her apartment door, I handed her the food and I was expecting her to pay me (as she had opted for cash on delivery mode of payment),” Kamaraj tells TNM, “I also apologised since the delivery was delayed due to traffic and bad roads. But she was very rude from the outset. She asked me ‘Why are you late?’ I replied apologetically, as there were road blocks due to ongoing civic works and there were traffic jams as well. But she kept on insisting that the order has to be delivered within 45-50 minutes. I am working on this job for more than two years and this is the first time that I have had to go through this kind of an ordeal,” the website quotes him as saying.Chandranee took the food and then refused to pay for the order, Kamaraj has alleged. He pleaded with her to pay, he said, as he was afraid he would lose money otherwise. “At this point, she called me a ‘slave’ and then she started shouting ‘What can you do?’ In the meantime, Zomato support told me that they have cancelled the order from their end based on her request and I asked her to return the food but she did not cooperate,” he told The News Minute.Because of the way she was behaving, Kamaraj said he decided to leave without the food.At this point, when I was walking towards the lift, she started using expletives in Hindi. She suddenly threw slippers at me and started hitting me. For my safety, when she was hitting me, I tried to use my hand to shield her blows,” he said. “At this point, when she was trying to push my hand away, she accidentally hit herself with her finger ring on the nose, which led to the bleeding. Anybody who sees her face, will understand that this wouldn’t be created by a punch. And I don’t wear any rings.”Because there is no CCTV footage, Kamaraj said, he is unable to prove his innocence.(With PTI inputs)
