Bengaluru: A driver working with a cab aggregator under an assumed identity was arrested on Tuesday on the charge of assaulting a woman passenger near Begur on April 28.
According to the police, the suspect, Imran Khan, is from Madhya Pradesh and the vehicle owner, Naveen Rajput, had employed a driver named Ravikumar. When Ravikumar quit in February 2017, Rajput hired Imran but did not update the company about the change.
The police said that Khan does not have a valid licence. When the woman passenger lodged a complaint, she gave the driver’s name as Ravikumar. Police picked up Ravikumar, only to be told by the woman that he was not the perpetrator.
“We suspect that when the two accused realised that the passenger had filed a complaint, they broke into the Ola office and tampered with Ravikumar’s documents,” said Additional Commissioner of Police Hemanth Nimbalkar.
Khan has been charged with molestation and also booked for forgery and impersonation. Rajput has been arrested for abetting the impersonation.
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. Later, she and a friend 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.
Khan denied the allegation of assault and told the police that the woman was inebriated and had refused to pay the fare. His stand is that he followed her when she left the car without paying, but returned to the car soon after she began shouting for help. The police are investigating these claims.
