The city police initially arrested Ravikumar, who used to work with cab aggregator Ola, following a complaint by a female passenger that she had been assaulted while in a cab.
According to the woman, a professional singer, the driver picked her up from Koramangala around 2 a.m. on April 28 to drop her at Begur. On Begur Road, under the pretext of taking a U-turn, he allegedly turned around and molested her. She managed to escape and took shelter in a nearby health clinic, from where she called her friend for help. Together, they approached the jurisdictional Bommanahalli police to file a complaint.
At the time, she noted that the driver’s name was Ravikumar, which matched the company’s records, said the police. The police arrested Ravikumar, but what seemed like a simple case soon started to unravel after the woman, during the identification parade, said the man arrested was not the one who had driven her.
“We then picked up the owner of the cab, Navneet Rajput, who confessed to the fact that he had taken on a new driver, Imran Khan, under Ravikumar’s name,” said the police.
According to Additional Commissioner of Police Hemant Nimbalkar, Rajput had Khan use the login details of Ravikumar. “Ravikumar was continuously asking for his documents such as police verification certificate, but Rajput kept on dodging him,” Mr. Nimbalkar said.
When Rajput realised that the police were investigating the case, he and Khan, fearing that their forgery would be exposed, attempted to erase Ravikumar’s details from the company’s database.
Khan denied the allegations of assault and told the police that the woman was inebriated and had refused to pay the fare. “He told us that she got angry when he repeatedly asked her where her home was. She allegedly shouted at him and left the car,” a police officer said. His stand is that he followed her because he wasn’t paid, but returned to the car soon after she began shouting for help. The police are investigating these claims.
