For Ved and Naina, the afternoon of August 18 turned out be one of their worst thanks to abusive Uber drivers who physically assaulted them and the cops who forced the couple to not file a complaint and write a ‘compromise’ letter, according to the couple’s version. The Bengaluru couple were allegedly abused and attacked by Uber drivers on Tuesday following an altercation over the drop-off point. Naina and Ved, who were heading to Bellandur for separate meeting at two tech parks in the area, were allegedly attacked by their cab driver and other Uber drivers with a car-jack. Uber meanwhile has suspended the driver until 'further investigation.'
The driver however has refuted the couple's version and has alleged that he was hit first. “We were travelling from Koramangala to Bellandur. The driver Suresh Babu stopped at Ecospace, Marathahalli and did not want to go further. He later agreed when we insisted and went to Bellandur, where Ved first got off,” says Naina.
Cab driver Suresh Babu
According to Naina, the cab driver then went barely 100 metres ahead and told her that he cannot go till Hebbal. “When I told him that that was not my destination, he became angry. Soon it escalated and he called me a dog and asked me to ’shut my a**’ in Kannada. He used many other expletives, by then I had informed Ved who rushed to the spot,” she says. It is after Ved reached the spot that things went out of control, as per Naina and Ved’s version. “Ved got into the car and asked why he could not drop me. The driver then started driving around the place, after few minutes Ved pulled the handbrake. The driver then turned and tried to hit me on the face, but hit Ved as he got in the way,” Naina narrated.
The couple and the driver got out of the car, following which the altercation got worse. “The driver took the jack from the boot. Ved somehow wrestled it out of his hands,” she recalled. Meanwhile, the couple tried to call various people at Uber, and the driver too called his friends for help. “A friend knew someone working with Uber. We got two or three numbers. But in a couple of minutes, many people turned up, some of them claimed to be Uber drivers, or that's what they said. They surrounded us and did not even let us go to the police station. The fact that we were not locals was thrown at our face all the time,” Naina told The News Minute.
Another driver who turned up to assist Suresh Babu
The couple alleges that police officers from the HAL police station turned up more than an hour after they called for help. “Even when the police arrived, the drivers would not let us go. Finally when we were taken to the station, the police officers told us not to file a complaint and instead compromise”.
The crowd that gathered around the couple
Ved’s friends who had also reached by then paid the driver Rs 5,000 and the couple wrote a letter saying they will not file a complaint against the driver.
An Uber spokesperson told The News Minute that, "We've suspended both the rider and driver account until further investigation. If either party wishes to file a complaint with the police, we are happy to assist in the investigation." “What was most disappointing was Uber’s reaction. I called multiple people. One manager told us ‘Madam, we will help’ and later never picked the call. Now my Uber account has been blocked,” she says.
The driver Suresh Babu responds:
Speaking to The News Minute on Wednesday however, Babu denied that he attempted to assault them. “I didn’t hit them, they hit me, so I struck back. First (when the commotion happened) they said I hit them, but people had seen what had happened, so they changed tack,” Babu said.
When asked to clarify whether the man or the woman who attempted to strike the first blow, Babu said: “See, such a huge problem arose because it was a woman who hit me. If the man had hit me, I would have fought back. I have written a complaint in detail to the police, you please see that. Finally, she apolpogised, so then what more was there to fight? It’s a woman, no? If a man had hit me, I would have fought back,” he said. Asked if he had been suspended, he denied it and added that he had been asked to meet with the manager on Thursday. This is not the first time that Uber’s customer service has been accused of poor response and lack of empathy in the name of customer ‘safety and empathy’ and driver’s ‘privacy’.
*the couple's names have been changed on request