Acting swiftly on a complaint lodged by a Belgian woman, who was allegedly molested inside an Ola cab on Saturday evening, the Delhi police arrested the accused driver early Sunday morning from his Gurgaon residence.
A city court sent the accused driver, Balraj Singh, a native of Alwar in Rajasthan, to 14 days in judicial custody after the complainant recognised him in the test identification parade (TIP). The prompt arrest and TIP enabled the woman to leave for her country on Sunday night, as per her original schedule.
The incident prompted Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj to ask Lieutenant-Governor Najeeb Jung to submit a report on the alleged crime. “We are committed to the safety and security of all foreign nationals in India,” the Minister tweeted.
The 25-year-old Belgian national, who was on a 90-day tourist visa to India, had hired the Ola cab from MGF Mall in Gurgaon to CR Park in South Delhi around 5.30 pm on Saturday.
On the way, the driver claimed that his phone GPS had stopped functioning and signalled the woman to sit next to him. The woman alleged that Singh suddenly pinned her down and kissed her.
When she protested and asked him to stop the cab, the driver dropped her at a street in Govindpuri. From there the victim made a call to a female friend whose house she was visiting in CR Park. The police were subsequently informed and an FIR was registered around midnight.
The Southeast Delhi district police constituted three teams to nab the suspect. “We sought the registration number of the cab from the Ola authorities and tracked down the vehicle owner. He revealed the driver’s address. The accused was surprised to see us land at his home. He was subsequently arrested and his vehicle was seized,” a senior investigator told The Hindu .
Singh was living alone in Gurgaon Sector 4 and was driving cabs for Ola for over a year now. His family lives in his native village in Rajasthan.
Ola Cabs said in a statement that they had sacked Singh. “We will share all required information with the authorities to help resolve this for the customer,” said the statement from the app-based service provider.
'Driver showed no remorse'
The Belgian woman who was subjected to sexual harassment by a cab driver on Saturday had heard countless stories of such abuse in the Capital.
But it was the first time during her three-month stay in India that she was faced with a situation like this.
Shocked at the Ola cab driver forcibly kissing her during the ride, she tried to push him away after he pinned her down.
“Once the accused loosened his grip, her priority was to get out of the cab. She kept calm and told the driver to immediately drop her in a crowded locality,” said a police officer based on his conversation with the victim.
After the suspect drove away, believing he was in the clear, the victim called a female friend in CR Park.
A post-graduate degree holder in Language Translation and fluent in four languages, including English, she later gave a detailed written statement to the police who visited her at her friend’s residence.
“He showed no remorse during interrogation,” said the police, who claimed that so far no previous involvement in any crime has emerged against him.
Moments before he sexually abused her, driver Balraj Singh had allegedly snatched her phone and deleted her call records hoping she would be unable to make the right calls after the crime.
Though the victim had not saved her friend’s number, she could retrieve it through a SMS they had exchanged.
The accused driver, meanwhile, returned home.
Set to fly to Brussels late Sunday night upon the expiry of her tourist visa, the woman told the police that the possibility of her return for any court proceedings would depend on her “nature of work at that time”.
“We knew that she had a flight to catch on Sunday, because of which we wanted to ensure that the driver was caught and identified while she was still here,” a senior officer told The Hindu.
Police have claimed that the victim was all praise for the three teams, which were supervised by DCP Mandeep Singh Randhawa and had Sub-Inspector Avinash Kumar as the investigating officer. “She told us she had not expected such a quick response from the police,” said an officer.
