Arrest of Uber driver, a repeat sex offender, for rape in Delhi shatters sense of security

The arrest of an Uber driver for raping a young woman in Delhi has shaken the false sense of security that taxi apps have given. Anybody taking a traditional taxi or auto-rickshaw after hours in India would think twice, especially a woman alone. But cool new services like Uber with their smartphone apps and GPS-tracking have made many people lower their guard. You no longer worry about how to get home alone after a late night event or an evening out with friends. You can get an Uber in minutes; after all, the driver would have been vetted by an international company that has raised billions of dollars and has an image to maintain.

The incident in Delhi over the weekend has shattered this false sense of security.

First, the sordid details of the crime, as told to media by the police. A young woman working for a financial services firm in Gurgaon, a satellite town of Delhi which is a tech hub, went to a pub with colleagues after work on Friday. She took a ride with a friend to Vasant Vihar, a residential locality of South Delhi, and then called for an Uber to go the rest of the way home. She dozed off during the ride, and woke up to find the car parked in a secluded spot. There she was beaten, threatened, and raped. The driver then dropped her home in North Delhi. The woman took a picture of the car’s number plate, called the police control room immediately, and got herself medically examined to confirm the rape. The driver had fled his home by the time police reached there. He was tracked down in a small village a couple of hours from Delhi on Sunday evening, after police offered a reward and an informer came forward with a tip. The driver, Shiv Kumar Yadav, will be produced in a Delhi court today.

Uber immediately came out with a statement on its blog after the incident: “Safety is our #1 priority and in India, Uber exclusively partners with registered for-hire drivers who have undergone the commercial licensing process, hold government issued IDs, state-issued permits, and carry full commercial insurance. Uber also has a GPS trace and record of all trips that occur on the platform – information that has been shared with the authorities. ”

See: How the Uber rape could’ve been prevented at various stages, but wasn’t

What is glossed over are several issues:

Uber claims that “every ridesharing driver is thoroughly screened through a rigorous process we’ve developed using constantly improving standards. The specifics vary depending on what local governments allow, but within each city we operate, we aim to go above and beyond local requirements to ensure your comfort and security.”

The Delhi police, however, told media that Uber is under investigation to verify if even the basic mandatory safety procedures were followed in this case – primarily, police verification and background checking of the driver, who didn’t have a commercial license to drive a cab in Delhi.

With taxi services getting more competitive, Uber has been ramping up its services rapidly in recent months. It launched a lower cost, small car variant UberGo on November 20, which is available only in India. The question is whether Uber goes “beyond local requirements” for safety, as it claims, or takes short cuts in its expansion drive.

What’s shocking is that the Uber driver arrested in Delhi is a repeat offender who, in 2011, had spent seven months in Delhi’s Tihar jail for rape but was acquitted later.

Arrested Uber driver was jailed earlier too on rape charges: sources http://t.co/UprBye7QxX pic.twitter.com/RkVRx8n4xw

— NDTV (@ndtv) December 8, 2014