Delhi government on Monday banned Uber, a private cab service, and blacklisted the company following accusations of rape against one of its drivers. The Delhi Transport Department said it has "banned all activities relating to providing any transport service by Uber with immediate effect".
The government blacklisted the company from providing any transport service in Delhi in future, the transport department said in a press statement.
The Uber cab driver Shiv Kumar Yadav, who was accused of rape, was not permitted to drive in the national capital under the Indian Motor Vehicle Act and that Uber "also misled the commuter about the nature of the taxi service offered by the Uber App”.
The transport department also cancelled the taxi's permit, registration certificate and Yadav's driver's license.
The department officials said the taxi permit was issued to Yadav on May 28 this year. At the time his character verification and antecedents had been verified.
Yadav has been accused by a woman of raping her while she was in the cab on her way back from a party.
The investigation into the alleged Friday night rape of a 25-year-old woman passenger by an Uber cab driver is throwing up question after question about just how the San Francisco-headquartered company has been allowed to operate a rapidly expanding business in India with so little local oversight.
According to police sources who spoke with HuffPost India, the driver, 32-year-old Shiv Kumar Yadav, did not have a commercial badge required to drive a cab in Delhi and had never been verified by the cab company even though he has been driving with the firm for more than six months.
Yadav was arrested after a dramatic chase Sunday evening from Mathura in Uttar Pradesh, said Madhur Verma, deputy commissioner of police (DCP) of north Delhi, where the case has been registered.
"They were not properly managed," he said, describing how the company's representatives were unable to provide information to the police team for the crucial first few hours. Even though the police party investigating the case reached the Uber office at 8 am on Saturday, they were given no information about the driver till 11 am that day.