By Sandeep Verma 
Bengaluru, March 7: Nobody planned for a fight that morning. One man wanted to walk his dog. A retired couple wanted to do their yoga in peace. By the time it was over, there were bruises, a smashed phone, threats being thrown around, and two police complaints sitting on a desk at Varthur Police Station.
What happened inside Brigade Utopia in East Bengaluru over the past couple of days is the kind of thing that makes people shake their heads and say, “Only in these apartment complexes.” But the truth is, this was not some freak incident. It was something that had been building. And versions of it are playing out in gated communities all across India, every single week.
It Started With a Dog and a Yoga Spot
Omprakash Bajpai and his wife, Shashibala, are retired. Both their daughters live abroad. Like many people their age who find themselves in large apartment complexes, they had carved out a small piece of daily routine for themselves. Every morning, they would head to a designated spot within the Brigade Utopia premises and do their yoga. Same spot, same time, most mornings. It was their thing.
Then came the dog.
A neighbour, Tarun Arora, had apparently been walking his pet to this very spot regularly and letting the animal relieve itself there. For the elderly couple, this was not just an inconvenience. It made their exercise area unhygienic. It was, from where they stood, a straightforward matter of basic respect. According to the complaint filed by Shashibala with Varthur Police, as reported by Asianet Newsable, Omprakash eventually said something to Arora about it.
What follows is where things get messy, and where the two sides tell completely different stories.
Two Stories. One CCTV Camera.
According to Shashibala’s complaint, when her husband questioned Arora about the dog, Arora did not take it well. She alleges he grabbed Omprakash by the collar and physically attacked him. When Shashibala stepped in to stop it, she says she was pushed and assaulted too. In her complaint, she stated that Arora then threatened both of them, reportedly saying things like “I’ll show you” and “You won’t be spared.” The fact that their children are away and they have nobody immediately nearby to call made the threats feel that much more frightening. She has asked police to take strict action and has sought protection. As reported by Asianet Newsable, the Varthur Police have registered the case and are investigating.
Tarun Arora’s version is the opposite. He went to the police too, and his complaint paints a picture where he was the one who got beaten. According to Public TV English, Arora alleges that somewhere between 7 and 8 senior citizens ganged up on him, kicking and hitting him, and that someone snatched his phone and hurled it away. He says he was attacked for something as minor as his dog urinating in an open area, and that a bystander had to physically step in before it stopped.
So there are now two complainants. Two versions. And somewhere inside Brigade Utopia’s surveillance system, there is footage that reportedly captured at least part of what happened. The police are reviewing it. Whoever initiated the physical contact is likely to face charges first. For now, nobody has been arrested.
This Is Not Really About One Dog
Here is what people who live in large apartment complexes across Bengaluru, Pune, Mumbai or Gurugram will immediately recognise about this story. The dog and the yoga spot are almost incidental. The actual problem is that thousands of people with very different ages, habits, schedules and expectations are crammed into the same 47-acre bubble, sharing the same walkways, parks and common areas, and nobody has sat down to properly sort out who gets what, when, and under what rules.
Brigade Utopia is not some small residential society. It is a township with over 3,000 apartments spread across multiple towers. It has families with young children, working couples in their thirties, and retired people like the Bajpai couple, all sharing the same spaces. Add pets into that equation and you have a situation that requires either very clear rules or very patient people. Often, there is neither.
The law on this, actually, is clearer than most people know. The Animal Welfare Board of India has explicitly stated that no housing society or RWA can ban residents from keeping pets. Not even with a majority vote. Pet owners cannot be denied access to lifts, parks, or common areas. On the other hand, the same guidelines say owners are responsible for keeping their dogs on a leash in shared spaces, and for cleaning up if the animal makes a mess. The Bangalore Apartments Federation has also said that if a pet relieves itself in a common area, the owner must clean up right away. These are not unreasonable expectations. They are just rarely enforced with any consistency.
The gap between what the rules say and what actually happens on the ground is where fights like this one are born.
The Part That Does Not Get Talked About Enough
There is something uncomfortable sitting at the centre of this story that deserves to be said plainly. Elderly residents in these large complexes are often quite isolated. Their children move cities or go abroad. They depend on small daily routines, familiar faces and predictable spaces to keep their days meaningful. When that gets disrupted, even by something that seems minor from the outside, it cuts deeper than most younger residents understand.
At the same time, pet owners in India’s cities have spent years fighting arbitrary apartment rules that have no legal backing. Bans on dogs in lifts. Extra maintenance charges for having a pet. Notices telling them to get rid of their animals. A lot of pet owners are genuinely exhausted by the hostility they face and arrive at confrontations already defensive.
Neither of those feelings is wrong. But neither justifies what apparently happened in the Brigade Utopia compound that morning, whether it was a group assault on one man or an attack on a retired couple who just wanted to do their yoga in peace.
Where Things Stand Right Now
The police are doing their job. The CCTV footage will almost certainly settle the question of who hit whom first. Charges related to assault, voluntarily causing hurt, and criminal intimidation are possible depending on what the footage shows and which version holds up under scrutiny.
What will not be settled by a police investigation is the bigger question. Brigade Utopia’s RWA has not put out any statement yet. There is no public information about whether the complex has designated pet walking zones or clear rules about which areas are restricted. That absence tells you quite a bit.
India’s new-age apartment complexes are extraordinary pieces of real estate. They have gyms, pools, landscaped gardens, co-working spaces and cinemas within their walls. What many of them do not have is a working system for sorting out the kinds of small but stubborn conflicts that come from packing thousands of people together. A morning walk. A dog. A couple doing yoga. These are not complicated situations. But left unaddressed, they build up quietly until something like this happens.
And then two families, one younger man and one retired couple with daughters far away, end up at a police station over a yoga spot.
That is worth thinking about.
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- Sandeep Vermahttps://hindustanherald.in/authors/sandeep/
- Sandeep Vermahttps://hindustanherald.in/authors/sandeep/
- Sandeep Vermahttps://hindustanherald.in/authors/sandeep/
- Sandeep Vermahttps://hindustanherald.in/authors/sandeep/
Arun Upadhayay