Make aggregator, police accountable

It is bad enough that a young woman is molested and harassed by the rider of a Rapido bike-taxi she had hailed, but even worse that the police failed to respond to her SOS immediately. The woman, an architect, was picked up by the bike taxi at 11.30 pm, and the rider, who took her phone on the pretext of checking the OTP, refused to return it. Eventually, when she had to snatch the phone back from him, she realised he was drunk.

Though the woman managed to call a friend to seek help, the driver once again snatched the phone and began speeding in the wrong direction, even as he groped her. The woman finally managed to jump off the speeding bike, while the rider escaped with her phone. Meanwhile, the friend whom she had called approached the JB Nagar police station to complain that she was in trouble. The police, however, refused to trace the victim’s phone location and instead described the incident as a “boyfriend-girlfriend problem”.

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The woman had by then managed to contact her friend with the help of passersby. What is most concerning, however, is that over 20 minutes had elapsed since the time the friend had contacted the police, and anything could have happened in the intervening period. This is not the first time that such an incident involving Rapido has been reported. In 2022, a rider and his friend were accused of gang raping a woman who had hailed the taxi service.

In the present case, the accused had registered a Honda Activa with Rapido but arrived in a Bajaj Pulsar to pick up the passenger. Such discrepancies are common among all aggregators, where a vehicle of a different model or registration other than the one shown on the app is pressed into service. This could be a case of registered drivers subleasing their aggregator registration to friends who are not verified. This can happen only because of negligence by the aggregator. In most cases, the action stops at the accused driver and does not extend to the aggregator, who too must be held responsible. Such incidents will continue to recur unless strong punitive action is taken against officials of the service provider as well.

There is also a need to sensitise the police about how to act quickly in such situations. The police commissioner should initiate strict action against the inspector of JB Nagar police station as such lapses impact the safety of citizens, especially women.