Two employees of the Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) in Gurunagari, Amritsar, were seen intimidating an elderly man after he accidentally urinated at the bus depot. The distressed man was forced to clean the area himself using his turban.
“I felt dizzy in the heat, and my urine came out.” The elderly man was seen crying and sharing his traumatic incident in a video.
Urinary incontinence is common among older people and can be caused by involuntary leakage or functional incontinence. The man also claimed that after the incident, he was told to wear his turban and was pressured to beat a boy and a girl.
The incident took place when one of the employees at the BRTS noticed that the man had urinated in the building of the BRTS. The employee in a video which has gone viral is seen abusing and humiliating the elderly man and asking him to clean up his urine.
“The employee rudely and forcibly asked him to take off his turban and clean the floor,” said Pawan Sharma, a social activist in Amritsar. He added that it is painful to see an old man crying and screaming in the video, and it is shocking that even in today’s times, the turban, which holds religious and social reverence, is humiliated.
“A complaint has been registered, and the incident was also reported to the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee,” he said.
A woman employee, who is also working at the BRTS, found out about the incident when another female employee, an accessory to the harassment, captured the video and images of the incident and later shared them in their official employee WhatsApp group, where other employees came to humiliate the old man and support the shameful act.
“When the video was shared in the group, I advised them not to share it, but it was already on social media by then,” said the woman.
The video shows that both the elderly and the man who beat him were wearing turbans, while some of the employees said that the elderly man is a Hindu and not a Sikh.
“Whether he is a Hindu or a Sikh, he is a human, and they disrespected the turban. It was not right, and I called out,” said the woman who called out on the employees who were engaged in supporting the act and passing abusive comments.
The woman says that after she called out and helped the old man share his account, she has been facing threats of assault and that she will be terminated from her job.
“They threatened me, telling me they would come to my home, pull my hair and beat me up,” she said. The woman has been employed here since her husband passed away during COVID-19 and now takes up more than a job to care for her two children.
