A scribe from the English language daily was threatened and assaulted by a taxi driver in front of the domestic terminal of the airport as other passengers and CISF personnel looked on.
The taxi driver was later arrested. A scribe from an English news daily had taken a white taxi from Topsia to go to the airport on Friday around 3:30 p.m.The taxi driver, Biddhi Shaw, a middle-aged man, had told him to pay Rs 250 as fare.T
he taxi metre at the same time was functional. When the reporter reached the front gate of the 3A terminal at the airport around 4:00 p.m. he saw the meter reading was Rs 137.
The 27-year old man paid Biddhi Rs 200 and said he shouldn’t be paying so much over the metre reading. The driver argued otherwise and when the passenger tried to disembark to go inside the airport he grabbed one of the bags of the reporter.
Biddhi then said he was a local driver and whatever he said would hold true. The reporter frantically called for help from inside the taxi but none of the passengers assembled for the security procedure nor the CISF personnel at the airport responded.
Instead, another taxi driver came and shut the car door.The taxi driver now with one hand on the reporter’s bag started driving speedily to the basement car parking lot.
When the scribe finally gave the extra Rs 50 that Biddhi had demanded, he slowed his car in front of gate 5A.There was further exchange of words and then the taxi driver hit him on his right ear and left.
The reporter shouted at the CISF personnel for their inactivity.Two of the officers chased down the taxi driver. Biddhi was arrested by the airport police and produced before Barrackpore court on Saturday.