Customer slapped in face after filming cockroaches in CCD charged with harassing employee who slapped him

Cafe Coffee Day's slogan "A lotcan happen over coffee" turns out to be apt.

There are conflicting accounts of exactly what happened, despite the existence of some video footage of it.

Arpan Verma, a student at the National Law University in Delhi, published a widely-shared video of the incident at CCD.

This post is notfromVerma's account, which has been apparently removed. Here is the recording ofthe same incident, if not the same exact footage.

Here is Verma's description of events.

Verma told other customers about the cockroaches. He alleges that the employee became angry and asked him to leave the store. One employee became abusive, allegedly, andtook out her phone and began recording.

Verma also began recording. This is where the above footage supposedly begins. He records the cockroaches in the refrigerated counter, then is slapped by the employee.

This event itself occurred on March 12, but videos of it first became public just this week, on March 27.

Unsurprisingly, the video generated backlash against CCD. #Boycott CCD was trending Thursday morning on social media site Twitter.

Activist Deepika Bhardwaj claims that rather than discipline their employee, Priyanka Priyadarshini, on March 29CCD stafftook herto the Manak Chowk police station to submit a complaint against Verma for "eve-teasing, harassment and molestation".

This was their way of preventing him from going public with his expose, the report claims. Verma has since been called to the Jaipur police, due to the formal complaint against him.

The CCD employee's side

According to Priyadarshini, Verma outraged her modesty and harassed her, police said. She claims that Verma and another man entered the CCD to order some beverages, and upon being told only coffee was for sale became furius and abusive, calling her a "slut and bitch". She alleges that they then left the CCDthen came back, which is when they began recording their footage.

There was a period of time that has been unrecorded, that took place before video was shot, and it's impossible to determine what took place here. The footage that the CCD employee shot has not been made public.

CCD hadaddressed the public about the incident, back on the March 27, claiming to be looking into what transpired.

According to Nikhil Anand Singh, who said he wasfriends with Verma,the lawyers from CCD asked Vermato drop the case against the coffee chain, and only then will they drop the FIR of sexual harassment.

(WION)