Indian Villagers Tie Telecom Worker To Tower Over Long Network Outage

A routine telecom inspection in an Uttar Pradesh village took a bizarre turn when residents tied a visiting technician to the very tower he had come to inspect. The man was reportedly held there for around two hours as villagers demanded that senior officials finally address a network problem they said had plagued the area for nearly two years.

The confrontation happened in Hardauli village in Fatehpur district on Thursday, September 10. What began as a routine check of the tower’s power supply quickly became an extraordinary protest over a service residents said they had been paying for without being able to reliably use.

The Technician Arrived To Check The Tower

Aditya Bhan Singh, a technician for Reliance Jio, had travelled to Hardauli to inspect the power supply at a local mobile tower. According to the supplied source, the assignment was routine and Singh had no direct authority over the wider network problems residents were complaining about.

He reportedly spent around two hours at the site, but the visit did not go as planned.

Residents surrounded him, the argument became heated, and Singh was eventually tied near the base of the tower while villagers demanded that senior company officials come to the village.

Footage from the confrontation shows Singh restrained beside the tower as a crowd gathers nearby. One villager explained the reason for the restraint in remarks later translated by coverage of the incident: “We’ve tied him up because of the issue, OK? We’re keeping him restrained. Until his superiors arrive, we won’t release him.”

The Network Problem Had Lasted For Two Years

Residents said the trouble had been going on for roughly two years, with unreliable service affecting far more than casual phone calls. Calls reportedly dropped, mobile data failed, online payments could stop working, and children trying to attend online classes struggled with the connection.

One resident described the frustration by saying, “The issue hasn’t been resolved for two years. There is no network, even when there is electricity.” Police Superintendent Abhimanyu Manglik later confirmed that villagers had complained about poor mobile connectivity, particularly 5G service, for nearly two years.

The complaints reportedly continued despite residents paying for their mobile recharges. From their perspective, the tower was standing in the village while the service they expected from it remained unreliable.

That made the arrival of a telecom technician an obvious flashpoint. Singh was there to inspect the infrastructure, but residents wanted someone who could address the network problem itself.

Residents Wanted Senior Officials To Show Up

The condition for releasing Singh was reportedly that his superiors come to the site. The villagers were not demanding money from the technician, according to the supplied account, but wanted their long-running complaint escalated.

The situation continued for approximately two hours before another villager called India’s emergency number, 112. Officers from the Bindki police station eventually arrived, untied Singh and took him back to the station.

Singh was not reported to have suffered physical injuries during the incident. No senior company official arrived at the tower that evening, meaning the confrontation ended without the immediate network solution residents had been demanding.

The incident then moved from a village dispute into a police case. An FIR was registered under Section 127(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which covers wrongful confinement.

Six Men Were Arrested And Later Released On Bail

Police arrested six men in connection with the incident: Rahul Patel, 28, Suraj Yadav, 21, Alok Patel, 29, Yogendra Patel, 36, Alok Yadav, 31, and Sachin Patel, 30. According to the supplied source, all six appeared before a magistrate and were later released on bail.

The complaint naming them came from Singh. That created an unusual reversal in the story, because the villagers had originally been trying to force attention onto their network complaint, but the confrontation itself became the subject of police action.

The case also left an important question hanging over the incident. How exactly did Singh end up tied to the tower, and who first proposed the idea?

The public accounts do not completely agree.

The Video Raised Questions About The Restraint

After footage of the incident circulated, Wireless Estimator, a telecommunications trade publication, examined the video frame by frame and raised questions about how tightly Singh had actually been restrained. Its analysis focused particularly on a moment around 29 seconds into the footage.

At that point, Singh appeared to pull one hand completely free from the rope around his raised hands before sliding it back underneath about a second later. The rope around his torso also appeared loose, with visible space between the cord and his body.

The publication did not conclude that the incident was staged. Instead, its analysis raised questions about what viewers could actually establish from the footage.

Those questions have not been publicly settled by the coverage supplied for this article. The video alone does not establish exactly what happened before or during the restraint.

There Are Two Accounts Of Who Suggested The Rope

Local sources cited by the Times of India reportedly gave one version of events, saying Singh himself suggested the tactic. Under that account, the technician may have believed that being tied to the tower would force the complaint further up the company’s management chain after years of unresolved complaints.

Singh’s own account reportedly differed. In the complaint that led to the FIR, he alleged that a villager encouraged others to restrain him.

Neither account has been conclusively resolved in the supplied reporting. The loose rope seen in the video also does not settle who proposed the restraint or why it was carried out in that particular manner.

What remains clear is that Singh was at the tower, residents surrounded him, and police were eventually called to release him. The disagreement over how the restraint began adds another strange layer to an already unusual confrontation.

Another Village Had Its Own Telecom Protest

Hardauli is not the only Indian village where residents have protested unreliable connectivity. In June 2025, residents of Purthi in Himachal Pradesh’s Pangi valley blocked the Sansari to Killar road over a state-run connection that had reportedly been out of service for months.

It was the second road blockade by residents within a week. The protest showed that frustration over connectivity can become a major local issue when residents depend on the internet for education and essential services.

“The tower is just standing there like a monument,” protester Govind Raj said at the time. Another resident, Janam Singh, explained that the community was not demanding advanced technology, saying, “We are not asking for 5G or high-speed services. We just want basic internet so that our children can study online and we can access essential services.”

The circumstances were different from Hardauli, but the basic complaint was similar. Infrastructure was present, yet residents said they were still struggling to get dependable connectivity.

The Network Problem Was Still There After Police Left

The strangest part of the Hardauli incident may be what happened after Singh was released. The six accused men were out on bail, the investigation remained open, and the supplied coverage did not report that the network problem had been repaired.

The telecom company also had not issued a public statement in the coverage provided for this story. That means the confrontation generated an enormous amount of attention without producing a publicly reported solution to the original complaint.

For around two years, residents had reportedly been trying to get their connectivity problem addressed through ordinary complaints. Once a technician was tied to the tower, however, the dispute became an international news story.

The contrast is difficult to miss. A failed mobile connection can remain largely invisible, while footage of a technician restrained against a tower can spread far beyond the village within hours.

For Hardauli residents, the tower had reportedly been standing there throughout the dispute. The question that remains is whether the signal will finally follow.