Representative image

Key Highlights An Uber driver, Shehbaaz Shaikh, has been arrested for allegedly molesting an expatriate woman working in Mumbai

He will be produced in court on Saturday



Uber suspended the driver immediately after details of the incident were put up by a friend of the expat woman on Facebook



MUMBAI: An Uber driver, Shehbaaz Shaikh (32), has been arrested for allegedly molesting an expatriate woman working in Mumbai who was travelling alone in his cab from Pali Hill in Bandra to Versova late on Wednesday.

Uber suspended the driver immediately after details of the incident were put up by a friend of the expat woman on Facebook on Thursday. Initially the expat woman approached Khar police to lodge a complaint, but she was directed to Santacruz police station, where the driver was booked for outraging modesty and arrested on Friday.

He will be produced in court on Saturday, Mumbai police spokesperson DCP Ashok Dudhe said. Cops tracked down Shaikh on the basis of details provided by the cab aggregator.

On Wednesday, the expat had visited a friend’s place in Bandra. When she was about to leave, her friend said in her FB post, “she asked us if Uber was safe and all of us jumped to assure her that she was in Bombay and she had nothing to worry about. Unfortunately we were proved wrong.”

Giving details of the incident, the friend wrote: “The driver initially spoke to her in a friendly manner and asked her where she was from and made small talk. Later, he said that since the roads in Mumbai are horrible she was welcome to come sit in the passenger seat up front with him. When she refused, the driver complained about low visibility through his back screen and told her he was going to pull over to clean it. She was very uncomfortable but allowed him to stop to clean the screen. She was surprised when he came to the back seat under the pretext of cleaning the window from the inside and proceeded to put his hand on her thigh and tried to feel her up.”

The woman then tried to push him off and only when she started shouting at him did he go back to his seat. She managed to jump off the cab and get home, the post stated. A source close to the expat said the incident might have been a repeat of the 2014 Delhi case where a 27-year-old was raped by an Uber driver when on her way back home from a dinner party, but the woman raised an alarm and shouted at the driver before managing to escape.

An Uber spokesperson said, “We have suspended the driver from our platform and have shared all details related to the trip and the driver with the relevant authorities (Mumbai police) for official investigation.”

