NEW DELHI: The world’s most valuable startup has filed a lawsuit against Ola accusing the Bengaluru-based company of dirty tricks in an escalating battle between the app-based cab aggregators who are vying for dominance in the Indian market.In a petition in the Delhi High Court, Uber accused Ola of resorting to a range of machinations, including making false bookings on its platform by setting up “fake rider accounts” and misleading its drivers through “fake calls” impersonating Uber. It is claiming loss of Rs 50 crore because of the alleged skullduggery and asking the court for a “perpetual injunction” against Ola as well as unspecified damages.In a statement, Ola described the allegations as “frivolous”. Uber declined further comment. Justice Vipin Sanghi, who is hearing the case, has asked Ola and its subsidiary Serendipity Cabs for replies before September 14 when the matter will be heard again. This dustup between the two companies is the latest episode in a high-stakes battle between venture capital-backed cab aggregators which are making claims and counter-claims about who controls how much of the market.Last week, Uber’s head of business for Asia said his company would overtake Ola within a month. The Indian company, which counts Japan’s SoftBank as its biggest investor, responded by claiming that its newly-launched service called 'Micro' alone would overtake Uber, which is estimated to be valued at $62.5 billion, within a month.The app-based transportation services business is no stranger to litigation. In December, autorickshaw aggregator Jugnoo accused Ola, which has an estimated valuation of $5 billion, of poaching employees and lifting its employee and driver database in Chandigarh. According to a 2015 Reuters report, the US Department of Justice is pursuing an investigation of a data breach at Uber “including an examination of whether any employees at competitor Lyft were involved in the episode”.According to industry estimates, the Indian taxi market is worth $9 billion. Of this, the share of the organised sector is just 6%. Uber’s petition, which ET has reviewed, has claimed that Ola created “93,859 false rider accounts” on Uber’s platform by “giving fake names, email IDs and untraceable phone numbers”. Uber also accused Ola of making “405,649 false bookings of taxi rides” and thereafter cancelled them to create “frustration” and disrupt business.It said that Ola employees also passed themselves off as Uber officials and circulated “malicious text messages”. All of these activities, it claimed, resulted in over 20,000 drivers leaving the company’s platform. Ola was stout in its defence, and suggested that the lawsuit is a “counter” to the contempt petition it has filed against Uber in the same court for allegedly not complying with a rule that bars the use of diesel vehicles.“It is not beyond our imagination that this is an effort to divert attention from the current realities of the market where Uber has faced major setbacks including the recent incidents of Uber vehicles being seized by the government authorities,” it said in a statement. “We stand by our contempt petition that Uber has added and plying new diesel vehicles within Delhi in wilful and deliberate defiance of the local rules and regulations.”Fake accounts, if they exist, can harm competition in a way akin to a denial of service attack where a server is overwhelmed with billions of bots till it crashes. Hypothetically, if hundreds of fake accounts are used to book cabs from one area and then cancelled in less than five minutes, actual consumers will not be able to make bookings during that period.While it is not difficult to track the fake accounts, proving illegality would be the difficult part. This is not the first time that the two rivals have crossed swords in a court of law. ANI Technologies Ltd, which runs Ola, filed a contempt petition in the Delhi High Court alleging that Uber has been buying new diesel cabs to provide services, which violated the Delhi High Court’s October 14, 2015 order.The high court in October had allowed app-based cab companies to ply diesel taxis in the national capital only till March this year – after which they will have to shift entirely to compressed natural gas. In the last hearing of that case, on March 15, the Delhi High Court had directed Ola, Uber and the radio taxi associations to share details, including registration numbers, of cabs which they intend to phase out by March 31, in line with a Supreme Court order.Uber has said that it is complying with all local regulations.