Delhi Police have arrested a taxi driver, whose services were used by cab aggregator app Ola, for allegedly misbehaving with a woman passenger and violating permit by not installing GPS on the vehicle causing a deviation from the designated route.
The incident took place at Mathura Road while the victim, a bureaucrat, was returning to her Sardar Patel Marg residence.
Ola’s reaction to the incident, which took place two days ago, has not addressed a particular point about the service raised by the victim – a mismatch in the details of the driver sent to her and the one who provided the service and misbehaved when quizzed about GPS device and his own familiarity with the route.
In her complaint, the victim has alleged that she was informed that a driver named Arvind Babu would come to her service, but the person who came was not the one whose picture flashed on her mobile screen at the time of booking. When he was arrested, he was identified as Parveen Kumar. He also allegedly refused to show his ID card during the commute when asked. According to government rules, every commercial passenger vehicle in the Capital must have a GPS installed and the driver has to carry a public service vehicle badge – issued by the transport department.
“We will investigate the case if it falls under our domain,” said a transport department official. Ola’s response statement though mentions: “We have terminated the said vehicle and the driver from the Ola platform after reaching out to the customer to take her feedback”. It carefully omits the driver’s name whose services were terminated – i.e. Arvind or Parveen nor does it make clear whether both were its driver partners.
The statement further talks about zero tolerance for such behaviour from driver-partners registered with them and conveys that the company has assured full support on sharing all required information like driver details, GPS coordinates etc., if need be, to help her pursue this. Ola again sidesteps the question about non-functional GPS which was installed in the vehicle driven by Parveen and owned by Aas Mohammad.
Ola also doesn’t mention whether the action to terminate the driver (whose name they have not disclosed) was taken after media reported the incident on Wednesday i.e. two days after it happened or as soon as the case was registered.
Asked if there was any previous criminal records of the two drivers or Mr. Mohammad, Deputy Commissioner of Police (South East) said no such records were available but added that the duo could be called for questioning.
When the public relations representative executive representing Ola could not provide the answers to some of the above mentioned queries , The Hindu sent an email questionnaire to the organisation. In a response on Wednesday night, the company just sent the earlier statement.