Badlega India
A 27-year-old passenger while riding her back home heard something very horrifying from the Uber cab driver on Tuesday. “Rape korey debo” (Will rape you) said the Uber cabbie to the girl. He steered the wheel to an isolated road in the city but little did he know what was coming for him.
The woman managed to get off the car, hit him on the shin bone and back on his knees and ran off. “I won’t be a victim and be found dead in the bushes by the roadside,” she said while recalling the self-defence classes she took in school 15 years ago.
Driver Santu Pramanik, 28 years old, was arrested within hours of the woman lodging a complaint and remanded in judicial custody for a fortnight the next day.
The woman described the incident in details to The Telegraph:
I had got into the Uber cab with a friend outside the Salt Lake in Kolkata around 10.20 pm on Monday. My friend got off and I asked the driver to head towards Broadway. When he took a detour, I protested. He went into a wrong lane again moments later.
I realised that his attitude had changed all of a sudden after my friend got off. He was now driving rashly and going wherever he wanted. He swerved the car left and right several times. I asked the driver why he was driving this way but he kept quiet. When he suddenly tried to take a left turn, I firmly told him to stay on Broadway Road.
I was apprehensive about the change in the driver’s behaviour but did not panic. I had a picture of the driver on my phone and I could report him to the authorities.
As soon as the cab reached close to where I live, I asked the driver to take a left turn into the lane leading to my house. He told me that since my address wasn’t showing on his GPS map, he would drop me wherever he wished.
I protested and demanded that he stop the car immediately, then he turned and told me in a cold voice, that he would rape me and dump my body in a ditch. He also told me that he had done this to several women before.
I jumped out and window and started screaming for help. I was seated behind the driver and he pushed his seat a few notches back to cramp my legs. He then reached out to grab me. I jumped out of the moving car. The driver braked, got off and tried to push me back into the car.
Remembering the training I took of self-defence 15 years back, I kicked him in his shin bone, then his knees and ran off…
On reaching home, the woman informed Uber about the ordeal but got a preposterous response from the Uber manager that the driver has been suspended since long. When she asked Uber why he had not been removed, the company official said that his cab not show up on her app. Uber told The Telegraph that the company has shared the driver details with the police to get him as early as possible.
