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Indian Woman Sues Uber In the US Over Alleged New Delhi Taxi Rape
"Uber has been the subject of controversy all around the globe," notes new submitter yuetteasvy (3999351), who supplies this story from Reuters about one of the reasons for that controversy: An Indian woman who says she was raped by an Uber driver while she was traveling in his cab in December is suing the San Francisco–based online firm in a U.S. federal court in California, claiming it failed to put in place basic safety procedures while running its car service in India. In her lawsuit, filed on Thursday, the New Delhi woman called the app-based service the "modern day equivalent of electronic hitchhiking." The unidentified plaintiff also calls for Uber to overhaul its safety practices, and seeks unspecified damages in the case, according to Reuters. The news agency quoted Uber as saying that it's "deepest sympathies remain with the victim of this horrific crime." Earlier, the woman was reported to have enlisted the services of Douglas Wigdor, a high-profile U.S. lawyer who represented Nafissatou Diallo, the New York City hotel maid who accused the former International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault. Prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney's office went on to drop all charges against Strauss-Kahn, while a civil suit was settled out of court.
The facts have been misrepresented in this case both in the Indian media and now in the U.S press. UBER did indeed ask for a police certified character certificate from the driver and the driver in turn handed them one, albeit a forged certificate. Any Indian who has worked with security agencies will tell you that Indian police character verification certificate is simply expensive paper to wipe your ass with. They have no standard format, are easily faked and are expensive to obtain no matter whom you pay - the crooks in uniform who give you one for a bribe or the crooks not in uniform who make forged copies for a fee. There is no central verification database which companies can use to authenticate one of these certificates. How then was UBER supposed to figure out that the certificate he handed them was a forged one? UBER is a boon for middle class Indians who are otherwise at the mercy of corrupt autorickshaw drivers who have no fixed metering and fleece customers based on the hour. Also, there is atleast some sort of traceability in a cab. Had the victim been raped by an autorickshaw driver, the case would still be unsolved: just another file in a mountain of open rape cases that the Indian police is too incompetent to deal with. What happened to her was terrible, but she is being an opportunist here. This is less about ushering in accountability from UBER than it is about squeezing UBER for every penny she can. It saddens me that a fellow Indian would resort to this.
the woman was reported to have enlisted the services of Douglas Wigdor, a high-profile U.S. lawyer who represented Nafissatou Diallo, the New York City hotel maid who accused the former International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault.
How did she manage to get hooked up with the same lawyer? How did a citizen living in India get connected with a high-profile lawyer in New York?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."