NEW DELHI: A parking attendant was chased and hit with a cricket bat by a physical education teacher, apparently because he demanded Rs 60 as parking charges, at Basant Lok’s Priya Complex Market in south Delhi. According to police, the attendant, Vikash Thakur, is in critical condition in hospital. The attacker, who works at a prominent private school in Saket, has been arrested.An eyewitness claimed that Thakur, 34, was hit on his head and other parts of his body by Vikram Jeet Singh, 28, more than a dozen times.’As man rained blows with bat, no one came to help victim’ Vikash Thakur was stuck in his hometown after losing his job during the lockdown and had to take a loan from some people in his village, Chatra in Jharkhand, to make ends meet. He came to Delhi four months ago to earn and repay the debt. The parking attendant is the only one with an income in his family of five. His financially strained wife had to take a loan of Rs 25,000 to reach Delhi after his attack.His wife, Shobha Devi, was present and in constant tears at the AIIMS Trauma Centre on Friday. “At around 2am on February 2, I got a phone call from Manoj Kumar, my husband’s roommate, and he told me about the incident. By around 4am, I had managed a loan of Rs 25,000 at a 4% interest, basically to pay for my husband’s treatment, but ended up using most of it for travel. I took a flight to Delhi from Ranchi,” she said. “He lost a lot of blood, and his condition is very critical. My husband was not at fault at all.”Thakur came to Delhi in 2005 and worked as a driver in the city. He returned to his village to attend a wedding and a few days later, the Covid-19 lockdown was announced. “That was a difficult period for us,” his wife said. “We had a Rs 2-lakh debt and he had lost his job. We had been slowly repaying that loan, but almost half of it was unpaid. Four and a half months ago, he came back to Delhi and began working as a parking lot attendant.”Before the assault on him by Vikram Jeet Singh, Thakur had spoken to his three children, aged between five and 11 years. “Whatever he earned, he sent more than half home for the loan repayment and the children’s education,” Devi said.According to Thakur’s friend Subhash, “Vikash worked the night shift and occasionally drove to earn extra money.” He was paid around Rs 12,000 per month and lived with a friend in a rented room.
Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/a-family-stares-at-bleak-future/articleshow/97588339.cms