A man who was slapped by an employee of Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) — an India-wide chain known for beverages and lounges — because he pointed out cockroaches at a CCD outlet in Jaipur has now reportedly been booked for sexual assault by the very woman who assaulted him.
The incident
Arpan Verma had reportedly gone to the CCD Jaipur outlet on March 12 and shot a video of cockroaches in what he said was the freezer of the outlet. He is also seen in the video urging the viewer to look at the face of the female CCD employee who reportedly shouted at him.
The woman, who is also seen filming Arpan, then comes out from behind the counter and slaps him. As the video is disturbed and goes near-black, she is heard shouting: "Why did you click my photo?" Watch the video here:
What is Consumer Forum has to say on this?
— Yogi Rappu (@Rappudada) March 30, 2017
No stand because it @CafeCoffeeDay belongs to politician?pic.twitter.com/2m4VhjIVYT#BoycottCCD https://t.co/4y24HB0JM8
The aftermath
After the video went viral on March 26, and after a legal notice had been sent to CCD, the company said on its official Twitter handle on March 27: "We will take the required action without compromising in our endeavor to deliver quality products and services to our patrons." It added: "We have escalated the recent issue at our Jaipur outlet, and are in talks with the consumer and the internal team to ascertain facts."
However, what was going on was quite different, apparently. Nikhil Anand Singh, who had uploaded the video on Twitter that went viral, said on the micro-blogging site that the lawyer on behalf of CCD had accused Arpan of sexually harassing the woman who had slapped him. What's more, Arpan is reportedly now being pressured to curtail the legal action initiated against CCD in return for the sexual harassment case against him being taken back.
When this became public, several sections of Twitterati started the hashtag trend #BoycottCCD in protest against the reported actions of the chain outlet.
