Rs one lakh reward announced by police for arrest of cabbie

A cash reward of Rs one lakh was today announced by Delhi Police for the arrest of a cabbie, who allegedly raped a 27-year-old woman here on Friday night even as a massive search operation was on in Mathura and other parts of Uttar Pradesh to nab him.

Shiv Kumar Yadav, the 32-year-old driver, hails from Mathura and the car in which the crime took place was recovered from the city late last night.

"The vehicle has been found and is being brought to Delhi and FSL examination by forensic experts will be done here. 12 teams are carrying out the search operation and we are getting full support from local police at Mathura," said Delhi Police spokesperson Rajan Bhagat.

The police have also issued a notice to Uber, a US-based cab service provider, under section 161 CrPC to join investigation in the case.

"We have issued them a notice to join investigation. There are norms to operate such cab service set by the Transport Department and we will see whether they were followed or not," said Deputy Commissioner of Police (North) Madhur Verma.

The shocking incident, which took place days ahead of the second anniversary of the December 16 gangrape, brought back memories of the horrific crime as shock and anger erupted both online and offline.

According to the police, neither the driver was verified nor the cab had a GPS tracker.
The company has issued a statement, saying that it was providing all help to the police in the investigation.

"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 licenced 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," said Evelyn Tay, an Uber spokeswoman.

The driver did not have a driving licence issued by the Delhi Transport Authority and the only link the service provider had with him was an Smartphone App which he exited after the incident, the police said.

Uber, which is an international cab-booking service, has its headquarters in New York. It also could not immediately provide the call log as details were said to be stored at the company's headquarters, the police said.

The incident also shifted spotlight on the different private cab services available in Delhi and how secure they are as a number of working women and even college goers considered them as a safe mode of transport in odd hours.

Commenting on the issue, Kunal Lalani, President of Association of Radio Taxis in India, strongly condemned the incident and said that the guilty should be booked immediately.
"The cab company concerned must come forward and extend whole-hearted cooperation to the authorities probing the incident. This one-off incident has prompted all the taxi/cab companies to further tighten their background checks of its own employees/drivers prior to employing them to ensure that such heinous activity does not occur in future," he said.

"This incident also calls for a stronger government regulation of taxi players which do not essentially operate under the licenced format of taxis and merely function as aggregators. We will take this up with the government," Lalani said.

The incident took place at around 9:30 PM on Friday when the woman, who works for a finance company in Gurgaon, was headed back to her home in north Delhi's Inderlok area.

On the way, the woman dozed off on the back seat of the car only to wake up and find that they had stopped at a secluded spot. She found that the car doors were locked and, when she tried to raise an alarm, the driver thrashed her and then committed rape, the police said.

The accused then dropped her off near her home in Inderlok after threatening to kill her if she spoke of the matter to anybody. it said.

A case has been registered at Sarai Rohilla Police Station under Sections 376 (rape), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of IPC.