The incident occurred in Apsara, Northeast Delhi, when Rajat Baran Chakravartty, the newspaper’s art director, was driving home — in Shalimar Bagh, Northwest Delhi. According to Chakravartty, he had stopped near Apsara Bridge to go to the washroom when the incident occurred.

He claimed the assailants hit him repeatedly on the head with the butt of a pistol.

The police called it a “minor scuffle” — a road rage — over right of way at a traffic light; no FIR has been registered yet.

According to Chakr-avartty, he saw the three men walking towards him as he was returning to his car after the brief halt at Apsara Bridge. “They walked towards me in a strange, menacing way,” Chakravartty said. “Just as I tried to open my car, one of them put the muzzle of a pistol against me and tried to push me into the car.”

Chakravartty said his attempts at resistance went in vain — at the receiving end of kicks and abuses, he soon found himself in the driver’s seat. “Two of them tried to push me further in but I pressed on the horn,” Chakravartty said. “By then, the third man had got in the backseat — he kept hitting my head with the pistol butt.”

Chakravartty said people perhaps presumed at first that it was a scuffle and did not intervene. “But a truck driver soon stopped in front of my car due to the constant honking, and traffic then came to a halt on the stretch,” he said. As people approached to find out what the noise was, the assailants fled towards the UP border, Chakravartty said.

They found Chakravartty bleeding heavily and rang up the Police Control Room but the police arrived almost after an hour and took him to Hegdever Hospital in Karkardooma.

Preetam Singh, Assistant Sub-Inspector at Vivek Vihar police station said, “It was a minor scuffle between the three and the complainant. It was at a traffic signal and these things happen.”

Chakravartty has filed an application with the police about the incident. No FIR has been registered yet.