Uber’s Tainted Image Worsens as Driver Accused of Rape Again

The Uber driver he allegedly raped and thrashed the woman at his home in the presence of his children.

A 38-year-old woman was allegedly raped by a man on the pretext of helping her get a job following which the accused has been arrested in Delhi.

The police said it faced some difficulty in identifying the accused, a 45-year-old twice married father of four, as the victim suffers from short-term memory loss. The accused, identified as Kamal is associated with cab aggregator Uber.

The woman told police that she went to Karkardooma court in connection with her divorce case on 6 July. While standing near the gate number 4 of the court, she met a man whom she narrated her problems and also that she is unemployed. The man told her that he could speak to his wife and probably help her in getting a job, the police said.

He took her to his home where he allegedly raped her and also thrashed her, they said, in the presence of his children. Later, he dropped her back near the court, from where she went to Lal Bahadur Shastri Hospital in Kalyanpuri.

A case was registered after hospital authorities informed the police about the rape.

Since the woman suffers from short-term memory loss, she could not give much details about the accused and the incident. She only remembered that she had been taken to some place outside which there was a yellow-colour board with "Gokul Dham" written on it.

The police took the victim to residential societies in national capital region with the same name to identify the spot of the crime, when she identified the board at a residential society's entrance near Hindon river in Ghaziabad.

After roaming around for 2-3 hours in the locality, the woman pin-pointed the house where she was raped and also described its interior. Kamal, the accused has been booked on the charges of kidnapping, rape and unnatural sex, the police said.

The accused is a driver associated with an app-based taxi aggregator Uber.

The woman is currently undergoing counselling.

This is hardly the first time that Uber has been on the news for all the wrong reasons. Earlier in 2015, Uber driver Shiv Kumar Yadav accused of raping a woman in his taxi when she was heading from Vasant Vihar to her house in Inderlok.

In 2016, an Uber cab driver threatened to rape a woman passenger and even abused her while racing down Salt Lake road in Kolkata.

In June, 2017, an Uber driver was accused of sexually harassinga female passenger in Thiruvannathapuram.

Not just drivers, some Uber officials have been accused of brazen sexual harassment, while led to the resignation of former Uber CEO, Travis Kalanick.

The San Francisco-based company has been working to counter the damage to its reputation following allegations of sexual harassment, trade secrets theft and allegations of efforts to mislead government regulators.

(With inputs from PTI)