india

Updated: Oct 23, 2019 21:28 IST

A customer in Hyderabad’s old city area who had ordered a dish on food delivery platform Swiggy, refused to accept the same on grounds that the delivery boy was a Muslim, police said.

The incident happened on Monday night, but came to light on Wednesday evening when delivery boy Mudassir Omar (32) lodged a complaint with Shalibanda police station. The police said they were examining the complaint and were yet to register a case. Swiggy has not yet reacted.

Ajay Kumar, the customer from Aliabad, ordered a snack item, Chicken-65, from Grand Bawarchi restaurant at Falaknuma, through Swiggy and made online payment. While ordering, Ajay mentioned that his preferences were: “Very less spicy. And, please select Hindu delivery person. All ratings will be based on this”.

However, he was upset when Mudassir called him to find out the exact address to deliver the snack item. “He asked my name and when I revealed my identity, he was angry. He shouted at me for not honouring his preferences. He said he was rejecting the delivery, because I was a Muslim,” Mudassir said.

Later, Ajay called up the customer care centre of Swiggy and picked up the argument with the executive. In the telephonic conversation, which was recorded by the customer care centre, Ajay is heard saying that he preferred delivery of the food item only by a Hindu delivery boy and would never accept it from a Muslim. He wanted that the delivery be cancelled and his money refunded.

When the customer care executive told him that he would incur the cancellation charges of Rs 95 and that the remaining amount would be credited to his account within five to seven working days, Ajay said he didn’t mind losing money, but would not accept the food delivered by a Muslim.

Mudassir, who claimed that he was a post-graduate student in science, said Swiggy would not go by the religion of the delivery boys while assigning the orders. “It was automatically assigned to me by the system which follows the GPS. Since I stay nearby, the order was assigned to me,” he said.

On Tuesday, Mudassir brought it to the notice of Amzadullah Khan president of a political party Majlis Bachao Tehreek (MBT). “How can the food be rejected based on religion? Ironically, Grand Bawarchi restaurant belongs to a Muslim. Perhaps, the customer was not aware of it,” Khan said.

He said he had advised Swiggy to lodge a complaint with the police for creating differences between Hindus and Muslims in Telangana.

In a similar incident in July, a man named Amit Shukla in Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh tagged Zomato in a tweet saying he had cancelled his order as “they allocated a non Hindu rider” for his delivery.

Zomatos’ CEO Deepinder Goyal promptly defended his delivery boy and won the internet with a tweet that his company wasn’t sorry to lose any business that comes in the way of its values.