Tempers flare at Tekka Market as auntie gets caught on camera attacking stallholder

Running a stall nowadays is tough, especially if you’re a stallholder at Tekka Market — one of the worst-affected wet markets since the Covid-19 outbreak. 

Tensions ran high on Saturday (June 6) it seems. Footage from a CCTV camera depicted a worker at the Haji M N Shahul Hameed Marketing butchery getting subjected to physical intimidation by a woman who’s allegedly a fellow vendor at the largest wet market in the country. 

A silent clip shared by the All Singapore Stuff Facebook page showed how the woman approached the worker in a threatening manner, getting right in front of his face (with her mask removed) to yell at him.

The caption that accompanied the video claimed that the lady is a fishmonger at Tekka Market.

Apparently, she had been shouting at a customer in the market as the queues had been “terribly bad”. The man at the butchery was said to have told her off for being rude, and that’s when the confrontation took place in view of the camera. 

[embed]https://www.facebook.com/allsgstuff/videos/2932157940225345/[/embed]

The video captured the moment when she started gesticulating wildly at the man, who tried to fend her off. She landed a punch on his stomach before the man walked away. At one point, she appeared to have spat at him as well. 

The man who was struck has since confirmed to The New Paper that the woman is indeed a fishmonger who operates a neighbouring stall. 

Mutton seller Nizamdeen, 40, clarified that the argument started when a queue from behind his still overflowed into the walkway next to the fishmonger’s. The woman had apparently used an empty stall to display some fish and was upset that the queue was blocking it.

When she started getting into an argument with a customer in line, Nizamdeen spoke up, telling her that the empty stall she was using didn’t even belong to her in the first place. That was when she approached him and hurled vulgar language at him in a mix of Hokkien and Tamil. 

Nizamdeen confirmed as well that she did spit at him. 

“When I deflected her punches, she spat on me. My left cheek and arm were full of her saliva,” he told TNP, expressing disappointment over the incident as he and the fishmonger have been neighbours at Tekka Market for nearly 11 years.

Worried about getting someone else's spittle on him on during an ongoing pandemic, he went for a medical check-up at Tan Tock Seng Hospital. He has since lodged a police report against her.

Netizens believe that whatever the lady did is unjustified, if not dangerous during these times. 

Article updated to include clarification by Nizamdeen

ilyas@asiaone.com