Employees abduct, abuse startup owner over severance

Employees of a startup, including a woman, abducted and assaulted its owner for refusing to agree to a three- month severance pay after the firm folded up under mounting losses.

Entrepreneur and Cambridge Layout resident Sujay SK (23) said in his complaint to the Halasuru police that he took sleeping pills and swallowed rat poison to end his life as a result of the torture from the employees.

Police booked the employees Likith, Rashmi, Vishwa, Tanzeem, Sanjay, Rakesh, and Darshan for kidnap for ransom, wrongful confinement, assault and criminal intimidation.

Salary disputes

Sujay said in his complaint that he ran a company which he closed down due to financial constraints. He claimed to have cleared the salaries due to the employees till the day they worked for him. But he could not agree when they asked three months salary in addition to compensation for their sudden loss of the job.

Likith and Vishwa called Sujay near the Vijaya Bank in Cambridge Layout to talk. When Sujay turned up, they bundled him into a car and took him to a house in HSR Layout, where they thrashed him with an iron rod. Tanzeem and Sanjay joined the others to assault Sujay, who was locked up in the house.

Having kept him for two days, they released him near his residence with the warning that they would file a false police complaint against him and harass his family if he failed to give the three-month payout.

Around 7.30 pm on March 25, Sujay was about to leave for Tamil Nadu to get some money, when Likith, Tanzeem, Sanjay and Vishwa abducted and took him to Maddur. They assaulted Sujay and released him at Virupakshapura in Bengaluru the next day.

Popped 30 sleeping pills

Sujay returned home in an auto-rickshaw and consumed 30 sleeping pills, besides drinking rat poison in an attempt to end his life, unable to bear the torture by his former employees.

He was admitted to a private hospital, where the staff informed the Halasuru police who took Sujay’s statement and arrested the seven accused.