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Couple Allegedly Assaulted By Uber Driver In Bengaluru, Cab Company Suspends BOTH Accounts

Couple Allegedly Assaulted By Uber Driver In Bengaluru, Cab Company Suspends BOTH Accounts
An Indian cab driver displays the city map on a smartphone provided by Uber as he drives in New Delhi, India, Friday, July 31, 2015. Ride-hailing service Uber has announced a $1 billion investment for the Indian market for the next nine months as it hopes to expand services and products, news reports said Friday. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das)
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An Indian cab driver displays the city map on a smartphone provided by Uber as he drives in New Delhi, India, Friday, July 31, 2015. Ride-hailing service Uber has announced a $1 billion investment for the Indian market for the next nine months as it hopes to expand services and products, news reports said Friday. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das)

A senior executive with an airline and her male friend had an ugly experience on Tuesday involving an Uber cab driver in Koramangala, according to several accounts. After the driver dropped the friend at Bellandur, he refused to go further and drop the woman at Hebbal, leading to an argument.

However, things escalated after the driver called his friends on his phone. The woman, named by The News Minute as Naina (not her real name) said several men surrounded the couple and refused to allow them to even go to a police station.

"The driver took the jack from the boot. Ved (name changed) somehow wrestled it out of his hands,” the woman told The News Minute. The couple also tried to call people at Uber.

"A friend knew someone working with Uber. We got two or three numbers. But in a couple of minutes, many people turned up, some of them claimed to be Uber drivers, or that's what they said," she alleged.

According to the report, police from the HAL station turned up an hour after the incident and took the driver and the couple to the police station and urged them to reach a compromise. The couple did not press charges.

The driver, however, told The News Minute that the couple assaulted him. "I didn’t hit them, they hit me, so I struck back," he said. On Thursday Uber said it has suspended the accounts of the passenger and the driver.

"We have suspended both the passenger and driver account until further investigation. If either party wishes to file a complaint with the police, we are happy to assist in the investigation," a company spokesperson said in a statement.

A source in Uber told PTI that no police complaint had been filed and the matter had been settled between the driver and the woman passenger.

"We heard both versions of the incident. Versions of the driver and the passenger. The driver first dropped one passenger 500 meters away from Bellundur Tech Park. The driver refused to take a woman passenger to her destination, three kms away from the tech park," the source said.

The driver asked her to re-book the travel, but the passenger refused to do so, which resulted in the fracas, the source said. The driver alleged that the woman assaulted him, but she denied it and instead made a counter-charge that the former hit her, the source said.

The US-based Uber faced a temporary ban in New Delhi in the wake of a woman passenger alleging rape by one of its drivers in December last.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.