Uber rape scandal: thousands demand driver background checks in India

Over 7,000 people have signed a petition calling on ride-sharing app Uber to impose a mandatory seven-year background check on its drivers in India, as it does in the US. 

The petition, which was launched early on Monday, was prompted by the allegedrape of a 25-year-old woman in Delhi by a driver. 

Local Delhi police, however, released a statement reporting that with “immediate effect”, Uber was to be banned from the city.

Keeping in view the violation [and the] horrific crime [allegedly] committed by the driver, the transport department has banned all activities related to providing any transport service by Uber with immediate effect.

The woman victim is thought to have fallen asleep in the car, then woken up to find the car in a secluded location, where the driver is said to have raped her.

It has since emerged that the driver, 32-year-old Shiv Kumar Yadav, had a previous conviction for rape. Yadav served seven months in jail for the rape of a passenger three years ago. He is due to appear in court next Monday.

The petition, hosted on Change.org and set up by Alina Tiphagne, calls for Uber to end its “double standards”, should it be allowed to operate again in the future. In the US, the company performs a seven-year background check into potential drivers’ histories. 

Uber’s own website states:

All Uber ridesharing and livery partners must go through a rigorous background check that leads the industry. The three-step screening we’ve developed across the United States, which includes county, federal and multi-state checks, has set a new standard. 

These checks go back seven years. We apply this comprehensive and new industry standard consistently across all Uber products, including uberX.

Tiphagne’s petition argues that if checks had properly been performed on Yadav, he would not have been allowed to drive and commit his crime.

Comments left by signatories included:

It’s shameful that a woman gets raped because of callousness and sheer “get rich quick” greed of a company claiming to be providing very safe service.

Companies like Uber who take Indian operations very lightly should be banned. They will only learn if they are hit below the belt, if their business is shut down.

In a statement, Uber’s chief executive officer and founder, Travis Kalanick said: “What happened over the weekend in New Delhi is horrific. We will do everything, I repeat, everything to help bring this perpetrator to justice.” 

Evelyn Tay, Uber’s spokesperson, released the following statement on the company’s blog: “Our thoughts are with the victim of this terrible crime and we are working with the police as they investigate. 

“We will assist them in any way we can. It is also our policy to immediately suspend a driver’s account following allegations of a serious incident, which we have done.”

Uber has recently been in trouble over allegations it plotted to smear journalists who had written negative pieces about the firm. It also came under fire after one of its drivers attacked a woman with a hammer.

Meanwhile, the issue of rape has been pushed onto the political agenda in India after the horrific fatal gang-rape of a student on a Delhi bus in December 2012, and after two sisters were found hanged after being raped in Uttar Pradesh.