Pub brawl: Exec took photos, was thrashed

Noida: A new CCTV footage of the brawl at Lost Lemons shows Brijesh Rai, a private firm executive, and his colleagues coming out of the pub into the corridors of the Garden Galleria Mall, minutes before a heated discussion snowballs into a fatal tussle.
Rai, a purchase manager at a battery manufacturing firm in Noida, was out drinking with his friends at the mall on April 25. Multiple skirmishes and an argument over the bill between the group of seven colleagues and the staff of the pub and the mall’s security team led to the brawl that night. The 30-year-old died of injuries sustained in the clash — autopsy report said he had a head injury and a ruptured spleen.
In the over three-minute long CCTV footage that emerged on Sunday, Rai and his friends are seen coming out of the resto-pub with others who appear to be staffers of Lost Lemons and bouncers of the mall’s security team.
For most part of the clip, Rai can be seen standing at the back while some of his colleagues apparently argue with the pub’s staff. The squabble, which appears to be discussions till then, snaps into a physical fight moments after Rai takes out his phone, purportedly to take a video or image of the argument.
At first, one of the staff members intervenes when Rai takes a photo. As he continues to take shots, another person tries to snatch his phone, after which the others join in and start thrashing him. The footage, tagged around 10.53pm, ends when his friends rush towards their colleague who is being beaten up.
A senior police officer corroborated the tentative sequence of events seen in the video. “The argument broke out inside the pub over billing. Brijesh Rai and his friends came out of the pub as the argument continued. When he clicked images of the two sides arguing, one of the staff members went to snatch his phone. That led to a fight as the staff started beating up Brijesh,” the officer said on Sunday.
So far, the police have arrested eight persons – 5 of the Lost Lemons staffers and 3 of the mall’s security team – and remanded them in judicial custody. Another accused is on the run. They have been charged under IPC sections 302 (punishment for murder) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) .
Additional DCP Ranvijay Singh told TOI on Sunday they would soon trace the absconding accused. “We are also checking the liability of the bar owner. If we find something wrong, we will arrest him too,” he added.
Citing preliminary inquiries, police officials said there were multiple points of friction between the group and the staff of Lost Lemons in the hour leading up to the violent clash. The accused told interrogators that the group appeared to be drunk when they entered the pub around 10pm. A staffer intervened when one in the group allegedly picked up a crate of beer on his head and another tried to smoke inside the pub. Eventually, the group was asked to leave the pub, they said. The final scuffle was over a Rs 10,000 bill, which was lowered to Rs 7,400, one of the staffers said. One of Rai’s colleagues alleged in the complaint that the pub staff misbehaved with the group.
(With inputs from
Advitya Bahl)