Gurugram: A resident of Gurugram recently had a "deeply unsettling" experience during an Ola ride, which left her worried about the safety of customers, particularly women. Puja S, who shared about her experience on LinkedIn, said that she was enroute to Delhi airport last week to board an early morning flight when the incident occurred.
The marketing professional stated that she had booked cabs on both Ola and Rapido in order to get a cab at the earliest given her flight timings. However, due to her trust in Ola, she ended up choosing its cab for her journey.
Puja claimed that merely ten minutes into the ride, the driver stopped the car and headed to fill his water bottles. Upon returning, he told her that the cab wouldn't start again unless she made a payment via a QR code. Puja agreed to this.
As she insisted on ending the ride to know the final amount of the fare that she had to pay for it, the driver allegedly began threatening her and forced her to pay for the first ride.
She claimed that as the conversation between the two escalated into a heated argument, the driver raised his hand to slap her, threatening, "I'll hit you so hard."
When Puja asked him not to touch him, warning him of consequences, he responded by laughing and continued with his verbal abuse.
As the argument boiled, the driver, Puja said, became "increasingly aggressive" and continued to threaten her. "I’ll come back at night and show you what happens," the driver told her.
"Despite my attempts to remain calm, he continued to yell, even as I was trying to guide my next driver to my location. To make matters worse, he took a video of me without my consent, and when I asked him to delete it, he flatly refused," Puja stated in the post.
Puja Demands Action Against Driver
The Gurugram woman somehow managed to book another cab to head to the airport. She thanked the second driver for dropping her safely to the airport in time.
Puja also said that she paid the second driver more than the required fare to reward him for his behaviour and for picking her up mid-way.
A user named Anindita Deb commented on Puja's post, "This is seriously concerning! I have recently been having issues with Ola myself. Because of their new "popular fare" policy, which shows a range of fare rather than a definitive fare, I've had 2 encounters where drivers demanded the higher value on the range and on me refusing to do so, they got verbally abusive".
Another user, Sakshi Saxena, commented: "It's ironic to see such circumstances happening when 3 days back on Independence day, the entire nation was protesting for women's safety. In such circumstances, the company would do their best to save the brand's reputation".
Puja also demanded immediate action from Ola against the driver involved in the incident, asking them about the steps being taken to ensure women's safety and to prevent similar incidents from happening again.