A woman who took an Uber ride on Thursday in Hyderabad claimed that the uber driver masturbated while she was in the car. This horrific incident has come to light after the #metoo trend on social media that was used by women across the world to share their experiences of sexual abuse.
Uma Sharma, who is originally from Delhi, had recently moved to Hyderabad. The woman took to Facebook to share this unpleasant experience that she had to undergo. She wrote,
“Today my #Uber driver thought it perfectly normal to masturbate while dropping me to the airport. As soon as we were on the relatively empty ORR in #Hyderabad, he slowed the car to about a 50 kmph and kept glancing back in the rearview mirror. After about 5mins when I realized what he was doing, I shouted and asked him to stop the car – unfazed, and continuing his act, he very nonchalantly asked me what was wrong. After much screaming, he reluctantly stops the car, and continued standing on the road until I took a picture of him and threatened to go to the cops.
I was scared- as an alone woman in a still-unfamiliar city. Scared of what else he may do since I’d threatened him. Scared that he may return while I waited on the road for another cab. Scared at how utterly powerless I felt when he blankly looked at me, without an ounce of guilt on his face. And most of all, scared that this was probably not the first time he’d done this- yet he was still out there, just a matter of time until he did the same, or God forbid, did worse with some other woman.
Two days back I was hopeful as I, along with hundreds of other women I know, chose to speak about the sexual harassment we’ve faced. Anger aside, there was also an odd sense of unity in watching so many women #stopthesilence after years and courageously come forward with their stories. Today, I shudder to think how many of these #metoo statuses were because of the same vile men who repeated their actions – only because we were too scared to speak up.
So today, I choose to speak up and I won’t stop until #UberIndia takes responsibility for their non-existent driver verification and complete disregard passengers’ safety. I’m also taking this up with the cops to initiate action against this worthless excuse of a man.
#Reshare if you’ve ever been in the same situation, known anyone who’s faced the same; If you’re as sick as I am of the supposed normalcy of these things. Re-share so that more women read this and maybe find the courage to speak up the next time they’re such a situation too. #nomore #yesallwomen.”
Uma Sharma even shared the photograph of the driver in question.
In her latest post, she updated that the officials from Uber called her and talked upon various issues. Her latest Facebook post read, “FINALLY got some response from the folks at Uber. A senior member from the India team called this morning and thankfully had something to say apart from sorry. Discussed the following issues:
– They confirmed that their team is currently in the process of rectifying all driver profiles which have a single alphabet as their first name. They’re still internally discussing to see if they can have the full driver names displayed in their app.
– The vehicle’s number and driver contact details get removed from the history as soon as the trip is over/ gets cancelled. Awaiting their response on this, considering these details were earlier SMSed to users before each trip, allowing them to have a copy of it in case required.
– For partially completed trips, the route followed by the cab is also removed from the app once you cancel the trip- making it look like you never boarded the cab. While the Hyd police was checking the CCTV footage, this proved to be quite troublesome- since there was no way to check the exact route taken by my cab. Response awaited from Uber regarding this as well.”
Unfortunately, this is not the first time that an incident of such kind has come to light. Many passengers have been victims of such gross occurences in the past and vented out their anger.
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