The survivor had hired a cab from Gurugram to Delhi's Inderlok in 2014 when she was raped by the Uber driver.
(Photo: PTI)
Almost eight years ago, a 27-year-old woman was raped by an Uber driver on 5 December 2014 in Delhi – leading to the cab aggregator's ban in the national capital, and the eventual exit of Uber co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick.
The driver, 32-year-old Shiv Kumar Yadav, convicted by a Delhi court, is serving life imprisonment. The case, and the horrific incident, is back in news.
Data from The Uber Files – internal emails and documents obtained by The Guardian and shared with the Indian Express – which is a part of the International Consortium of Investigative journalists – revealed that the cab aggregator's first response to the crime was to "shift blame to flawed Indian background checks."
Email exchanges also revealed that the company's focus was on "damage control to prevent a reputational fallout in other global markets."
The survivor, who then worked in a finance company in Gurugram, had hired an Uber cab to return to her home in northwest Delhi's Inderlok on the night of 5 December 2014. She was returning home around 9 pm – after having dinner with her friends – when Uber driver Shiv Kumar Yadav raped her.
He threatened to kill her if she 'revealed the incident' to anyone, before dropping her home in Inderlok.
“The woman clicked a photograph of the car’s number plate and then made a call to the police control room and reported the incident,” the officer added.
In a public statement, Uber, before being banned in the national capital, had said: “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.”
Almost two months after the incident, on 9 January, a special fast track court began hearing the arguments on framing charges in the case.
During investigation, then 31-year-old Yadav was found to be not only using a 'fake ID' – but he also had a previous rape charge against him from 2011. While that case had ended in an acquittal due to lack of evidence, the Delhi Police had arrested Yadav and held him for six months. In 2004, the driver was charged with sexual assault in Uttar Pradesh's Mainpuri.
Almost ten months after the incident, a Delhi court held Yadav guilty on charges of rape and endangering the life of the victim. He was sentenced to lifetime imprisonment in 2015.
But private documents, accessed by multiple news outlets in 2017, showed that they were secretly collecting private medical information of the survivor.
In December 2017, the survivor filed a new defamation suit in the US after reports emerged suggesting that Uber had investigated the complaint – by obtaining her medical records and speculating whether she had 'made up the claim' to hurt the firm.
The survivor, who had moved to the US, alleged in the lawsuit that Uber had not only violated her privacy but also defamed her character.
Kalanick was ousted as the CEO in June that year, and when allegations were made public, Uber confirmed that Alexander no longer worked in the firm.
According to The Indian Express, Mark MacGann, then Uber’s Head of Public Policy for Europe and Middle East, wrote on 8 December 2014:
Another top executive wrote to Uber Managers: “Can you guys lay out other places where you think in light of India/reputation issues, you could see courts or regulators find a way or reason to shut us down.”
But the Uber Files revealed that one of Uber’s communication managers, Benjamin Novick, wrote an email about how the new feature should not be called a ‘panic button’ but an ‘SOS’ feature instead.
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