Will work as daily wagers, but won’t return to Gurgaon: Bisht’s friend

10 tenants who lived in the PG accommodation in DLF Phase-3 left after the incident

Four days after the death of Ramesh Bisht, who was allegedly pushed off the fifth floor by the owner of the paying guest accommodation he stayed in, at least 10 tenants of his PG have returned to their native village in Uttarakhand, vowing never to return.

The inmates of the PG accommodation where Ramesh Bisht put up. (Sanjeev Verma/HT PHOTO)

Bisht had been staying in the PG in DLF 3 with others from his village of Bindukhatta in Nainital. He was among the 15 people from Nainital who had reached Gurgaon in June under the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) for a 45-day training with ILF&S to become waiters and attendants in hotels.

“The incident was a stark reminder that we will always be considered outsiders, in Gurgaon and elsewhere. Earlier too, we had been threatened and abused by the owner’s men saying that they were locals and we were not,” said Ravi Mangla, Bisht’s friend and one of the 10 people who returned to Uttarakhand on Friday.

A furious Kishan Deopa, Bisht’s roommate, said, “ Yahan pe rehke mazdoori kar lenge par Gurgaon nahin jaaenge (we will work as daily wagers here, but won’t return to Gurgaon).”

Recalling Wednesday night’s incident, he said, “Ramesh kept shouting and begging for his life for 20 minutes after he was pushed from the balcony while Satbir (the owner) and his men didn’t let us reach him. I haven’t been able to sleep properly since then and keep remembering his face.”

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Suraj Joshi, another of the men who refused to return to Gurgaon, said they had left their village hoping for a better life, but “we didn’t know we won’t even have a life”.

Bisht, Deopa, Mangla and Joshi were among the 15 people who had come to Gurgaon for the training. While half of them had already enrolled and started training on June 15, others, including Bisht, were to begin training in the first week of July.

“Ramesh and I had reached on June 28. Our batch, which was the ninth one, was to begin training from July 6 or 7,” said Deopa.

Other trainees from Uttarakhand who were staying in the PG have been shifted to Okhla in New Delhi, Mangla said.

“We had been provided accommodation in Okhla earlier as that is where the training centre was. ILF&S had started training adjacent to our PG in DLF 3 recently. We don’t know if they shifted the old training centre or started a new one,” he added.