Wheelchair user barred from club in India

From The Times of India:

KOLKATA, India -- A wheelchair-bound woman was denied entry into a night club in Kolkata early on Sunday with the staff telling her that handicapped persons weren't entertained. Alka Arora, 36, suffers from sclerosis, an auto-immune disease, that has left her lower limbs immobile.

Furious at the behaviour of the staff, Alka has filed a complaint with the state human rights commission, alleging blatant discrimination. The management of the night club, Shisha, while acknowledging that the guest had been denied because she was in a wheelchair, reasoned that it was for her own safety as the newly-renovated club was extremely crowded at that hour.

Alka, her husband Rahul and friends reached Shisha at Camac Street around 1.30am on Sunday after hanging out at Saturday Club across the road. "Since the night club had opened after renovation, Alka wanted to check it out and we decided to wheel her in," said Rahul.

At the ground floor entrance to the block where Shisha is located, Shisha director (operations) Arvind Bhatnagar met the group that also included a member of the club and told them that the new night club is on the sixth floor while the elevator is available till the fifth.

˜We told the gentleman we would lift the wheelchair up the stairs and proceeded to the elevator. Among us, we managed to negotiate the stairs with the wheelchair. It is only after reaching the club's doorstep that the manager stopped us and said persons in wheelchairs aren't allowed," recalled Siddharth Rai, a member of the group.