A trip downtown for a relaxing stroll by the waterfront turned into a nightmare outing for a Toronto woman, who says she was attacked by an Uber driver in an incident that was caught on video.

“I’m shocked that this can happen in Canada,” passenger Maria Mughal told the Star. “What is going to be done about women’s safety?”

On Saturday, Mughal, her three friends and a child were headed for an evening stroll by the waterfront when she says a series of arguments escalated into a physical dispute on the sidewalk in Queens Quay, near the corner of Yonge St., in Toronto.

In a video shot by her friend Nusrat Shafi, who was also a passenger, shrill screams are heard as a male driver drags Mughal out of the car. Shafi then enters the car to ensure that the driver doesn’t flee while she calls police, Mughal said.

“I’m still in so much pain,” Mughal, from Toronto, told the Star Monday. “My arm is hurting where he pulled me. . . . I can’t move my arm upwards.”

Mughal says she suffered a fractured finger and a couple of scratches. But worse than the physical pain, she says, is the impact of the ordeal that has stayed with her at work, where she’s unable to type, and unable to think of anything other than what happened.

When asked about the incident on Saturday, Toronto police constable Jenifferjit Sidhu told the Star that an Uber driver was arrested, but she wouldn’t confirm that it was the man shown in the video.

The Star has not been able to contact the driver in the video.

When Mughal and her friends first got into the car, she said she opted to take a different route and the driver refused, questioning her knowledge of roads and directions.

“He said that my route was not enough money, and that I didn’t know where I was going and before we knew it, we were stuck in traffic,” she said.

Mughal and her friends were speaking Urdu, when the driver expressed “racism” towards them, telling them that “Muslim Pakistani women should keep quiet,” she said.

Mughal said she and her friends retaliated by telling the driver to be quiet, then he began to drive “rashly,” and dropped them off at a different location than they’d asked.

She said the driver tried to take her photo after they pulled up to their destination on Queens Quay near Bay St. She asked him not to, prompting the driver to exit the car and pull her out from the passenger side, Mughal said.

During the ordeal, Mughal said her friend Shafi captured the incident on video after she exited the cab from the back seat, and while standing on the sidewalk.

“He dug his nails into my arm. . . . I don’t understand this male mentality to do that,” Mughal said. “Who gave him the right to touch me?”

When police arrived, Mughal said she was transported to hospital with minor injuries. She said police later told her that her Uber driver had been charged.

Const. Sidhu told the Star that an Uber driver was arrested in an incident on Saturday, but wouldn’t confirm that it was the man shown in the video. Sidhu said Mohammed Mahbubul Haque, 42, of Toronto, has been charged with two counts of assault.

Police say he has been released with a promise to appear in court. The Star was unable to contact Haque.

Kayla Whaling, Uber spokeswoman, reviewed the video and told the Star that the actions of the driver are “unacceptable” and “fail to meet our expectations at every level.”

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“As a result, we have removed his access to the Uber platform. We are reaching out to everyone involved to understand what may have caused this situation to get to this point,” Uber wrote in a statement.

The incident comes as the city says it will begin individual screening and licensing of Uber drivers by the end of August under a new set of rules enacted in mid-July. Members of the taxi industry have criticized the new “private transportation company” rules, saying they give companies like Uber an unfair advantage and don’t do enough to protect passengers, a claim Uber and the city have denied.

Correction – August 17, 2016: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said Maria Mughal told the Star that she took pictures of the driver because she wanted to use them to show the authorities.

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