SARIYA GHUSA DOONGA

The incident was reported at around 1:25 am on Saturday
Raj Shekhar,TNN | Dec 7, 2014, 01.44 AM IST
NEW DELHI: A 25-year-old executive working for a global company was raped by the driver of a private taxi service when she was returning from a party in Vasant Vihar in south Delhi to her home in Inderlok in north Delhi on Friday night. The woman works with a global tax and advisory service consultants based in Gurgaon. The incident took place between 11pm and 12.45am inside the Swift Dzire cab (DL 1YB 791*) she had booked through a mobile app. The place of assault is not known yet as the driver has not been arrested.
The woman has not been able to identify the spot since it was dark and she was disoriented because of the assault and a few drinks she had consumed at a party with her friends, police said.

The driver has been identified as Shiv Kumar Yadav (32) from Mathura in Uttar Pradesh. The police registered an FIR early on Saturday and more than a dozen teams, including that of the special cell, crime branch and north district police, are raiding suspected hideouts of the driver.

“The woman had boarded the cab after booking it with Uber. We have found gross negligence on their part as they did not have even a GPS in the cab and the driver had not been verified. We have, however, identified him and he will be arrested at the earliest. The vehicle used in the crime has been recovered from a place in western Uttar Pradesh,” said DCP (north) Madhur Verma. Uber is a US-based ride sharing service that works on smart phone applications.

According to her statement to the police, the woman was partying with her friends at a pub in Cyber Hub in Gurgaon. She left around 9pm and headed for a friend’s place in Vasant Vihar. According to sources, she had meanwhile booked the cab on her smart phone. The driver reported around 10.20pm and she left soon thereafter.

The woman says she fell asleep on the way and woke up suddenly to find the driver on the rear seat, molesting her. “I tried to push him away and looked around to find the car at a desolate spot. He slapped me a few times and scratched me on the face and neck during the scuffle. When I tried to scream, he pressed my mouth and threatened to kill me.

“He said “sariya ghusa doonga pet mein agar chillayi toh” (I will thrust an iron rod into your stomach if you scream). I pleaded with him not to harm me,” the woman is reported to have told the police. She was then raped by the man.

After the driver was through with her, he took away her phone. He, however, returned it to her after giving a missed call on his phone. He said he now had her number and other details and would kill her if she revealed the incident to anyone. He asked her to keep quiet if she wanted to reach home safely. The woman, who was traumatized and on the verge of collapsing, sat quietly as he dropped her near her home, warning her once again.

The woman had the presence of mind to take a picture of the cab as it sped away and then tried to inform her friends. “I was panicking and sent a message saying ‘I have been raped by the cab driver’ to my friend whom I had dialled last before boarding the cab. However, the message went to the driver instead as he had dialled his number from my phone. He called me back, saying I was making a death wish by informing people and that I should quietly go home if I did not want to be killed. I said sorry to him and disconnected as I moved away from the spot where he had dropped me,” she told the police.

She then dialled 100 and a PCR van rushed to the spot. Soon, the local police had been informed and women cops were sent. She was taken to government hospital for medical examination.

An FIR under sections of the law related to rape, abduction and assault was registered on the basis of her statement and investigations started. The woman’s statement was recorded in the presence of woman NGO counsellors and a manhunt was launched to nab the driver. The district DCP and senior officers began monitoring the probe. Around 12 teams were formed. Meanwhile, the survivor’s family was informed and she was provided medical help.

The service provider was contacted in the early hours and verification documents obtained. The cops raided the driver’s house but he wasn’t there. The driver had not been arrested till the filing of this report.

The survivor, sources said, is the only child of her parents and her father had recently shifted to India after working for a private firm abroad. She has done M.Com from a foreign university and is living with her parents.

Taxi service Uber released a statement after the alleged rape of a Delhi woman by their driver. The company said that they have suspended the accused driver and will assist the cops in the investigation.

Below is the statement issued by Uber:

Our thoughts are with the victim of this terrible crime and we are working with the police as they investigate. We will assist them in any way we can. It is also our policy to immediately suspend a driver’s account following allegations of a serious incident, which we have done.

Safety is Uber’s highest priority and in India, we work with licensed driver-partners to provide a safe transportation option, with layers of safeguards such as driver and vehicle information, and ETA-sharing to ensure there is accountability and traceability of all trips that occur on the Uber platform..

— Evelyn Tay, Uber spokeswoman

No verification, no GPS: Police

According to Madhur Verma, DCP (North), the driver and the vehicle involved in the incident were part of Uber’s newly-launched low-cost cab-booking service. Police have listed some norms and guidelines that may have been flouted:

# The driver did not undergo the mandatory police verification, and a background check was not conducted by the company.

# He did not have a driving licence issued by the Delhi Transport Authority, which is recommended for those engaged in driving cabs in the capital.

# Instead of a mandatory GPS system, the only link with the driver was an application that he had downloaded on the phone he was using.

– See more athttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Delhi-cabbie-rapes-executive-returning-from-party/articleshow/45399533.cms