Woman Accuses Cab Driver Of Abuse, Claims Attempted Phone Theft

A Jaipur-based content creator shared a harrowing experience she had with the Uber service. The mother of two young girls was on the way to pick up her elder daughter from school when the incident happened.

Gupta took to her Instagram handle and shared the ordeal in a video. She alleged that while travelling by Uber, she was engaged in a phone call when the driver, identified as Shyam Sundar, suddenly attempted to snatch away her phone.

Jaipur Woman Claims Harassment By Cab Driver

Despite protesting and pleading with him to stop the vehicle, the driver continued to speed up and ignore her requests. He had even verbally abused her.

Concerned about her safety, Gupta moved to the other end of the seat and managed to exit from the moving vehicle. The driver had accelerated away after that.

In the caption shared with the video, she urged Uber to take immediate action to ensure the safety of its clients and prevent such incidents from happening in the future. She also claimed that she has been filing complaints on Uber but hasn't received any reply.

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A post shared by Manali Gupta | LaviSHA & LaiSHA |Influencer (@littleshasisters)

Comments - The Good And The Bad

The video generated varied responses from netizens. While a lot of women shared their distressing experiences with Uber or other cab services, some users tagged Uber and urged the company to take stringent action against the driver.

However, some users said the narrative was not clear and felt that the woman was hiding some details of the incidents. One user stated that they couldn't understand the entire scenario as they felt the woman wasn’t clearly stating what happened. They asked why the cab driver behaved that way in the first place. Another user commented that the woman was simply doing it for “name and fame.” A third user called this a “new publicity stunt.”

Why Would Women Lie In A Victim-Bashing Society?

Amidst these vile comments, it was heartening to see numerous women come forward to extend their moral support, share similar incidents, and urge Uber to take action. Why would people even think that a woman would take to social media and narrate an incident of harassment just to get famous? Why would a mother of two daughters want to create unnecessary drama in her life that might affect her daughters’ lives too?

It's just in the past few years that more women are being open about the harassment and abuse they face in public. It’s not for a woman to talk about being harassed, especially in a society that quickly resorts to victim blaming and shaming.

If a woman is not narrating the incident of harassment coherently, it is assumed she is lying; if a woman is clearly jotting down facts, then again, she is accused of fabricating the incident, and it is questioned how a traumatised woman would remember every single detail precisely and narrate the incident with such cohesion. So, basically, the problem is about women daring to speak up against harassment, right?

How each person responds to a traumatic incident is subjective. I’m not trying to make a blanket statement that all women are good and women never lie. However, my point is that society needs to stop the practice of blaming and shaming women and learn to hear what they have to say, be sensitive, and be empathetic instead of spewing venom.

Views expressed by the author are their own

Suggested Reading: Action Taken Against Bengaluru Cab Driver For Flashing At Woman