Uber Banned in India's Capital After Driver Is Accused of Rape

New Delhi: The Delhi region on Monday banned Uber, the popular hail-a-ride service, after one of its drivers appeared in court on suspicion of raping a passenger, who dozed off during a ride home only to discover that the driver had taken her to a secluded spot and climbed into the back of the vehicle.

Criticism of Uber's licensing and screening procedures was heightened when it emerged that the driver, Shiv Kumar Yadav, had been detained for seven months on suspicion of raping another female passenger three years ago. That case was ultimately closed and Yadav was acquitted, said Madhur Verma, the deputy commissioner of the police for the northern district of New Delhi.

Regional authorities followed up late Monday by banning all taxi services based on smartphone apps, which may result in the closure of as many as 20 popular services.

Since its launch last December, Uber had gained a large following among young, tech-savvy women in Delhi, where finding safe transportation after dark is especially difficult.

But the new service - which uses a smartphone app to link customers with available drivers - ran afoul of well-established taxi firms and with government regulators, who saw so-called aggregators as ducking legal and safety obligations shouldered by ordinary city cabs.

Uber is running into similar problems in cities in other countries. A Dutch court on Monday prohibited the UberPop service, which links clients with drivers who do not have professional licenses, from operating in the Netherlands. The UberPop service has been banned in the German cities of Berlin and Hamburg, and London's main taxi association has brought lawsuits against Uber and a number of its drivers.

Lawmakers in Thailand and Vietnam have banned the service, and the city government in Seoul has said it plans to do the same.

None of these cases were as dramatic, though, as the one unfolding here. Delhi has yet to recover from a brutal rape that took place two years ago, when a woman returning home after seeing a movie boarded a private bus with a male companion and was gang-raped so brutally that she later died of her injuries.

A wave of street demonstrations followed that crime, and the authorities appeared to be braced Monday for turbulence that did not materialize. As the driver, Yadav, left a courthouse in Delhi, he was surrounded by around three dozen police officers who whisked him away at a sprint.

Uber executives, too, seemed to be girding themselves for a fight. The company's chief executive, Travis Kalanick, issued a statement saying that Uber "will work with the government to establish clear background checks currently absent in their commercial transportation licensing programs."

He also said Uber would try to use technological advances "to help make New Delhi a safer city for women."

"What happened over the weekend in New Delhi is horrific," the statement said. "Our entire team's hearts go out to the victim of this despicable crime. We will do everything, I repeat, everything to help bring this perpetrator to justice and support the victim and her family in her recovery."

The woman, who is in her late 20s and works at a finance company, was returning from New Delhi to her home in nearby Gurgaon on Friday night. She said she awoke after Yadav had changed his route, taking her to a secluded area not far from a garbage dump. He then parked and raped her, she told the police Saturday morning.

Verma, the police investigator, said a physical examination showed signs of a "fierce sexual assault and rape."

The police said the woman took a photograph of the cab, including its license plate, using the camera on her mobile phone, which she provided to the police. Yadav was arrested Sunday night, when police burst into a house where he had barricaded himself, in his native village 90 miles southeast of New Delhi.

During questioning, Yadav confessed to raping his passenger Friday, as well as another woman he drove home in 2011, Verma said.

It remains unclear how Yadav was hired given the previous allegation against him.

In 2011, then driving a cab for another service, he picked up a 22-year-old woman who needed to go home after working a night shift at a bar. She later told the police he had driven her to a farmhouse and raped her; a medical examination confirmed sexual assault.

Uber does not conduct background checks on its drivers in India, one of its local executives, Neeraj Singhal, told The Wall Street Journal last month. It accepts partner drivers if they have valid insurance documents, a driver's license and a commercial permit to drive a taxi, he said.

The Delhi Transport Department acknowledged, in a statement, that it had granted Yadav an "All-India Tourist Permit" this May, "after due verification of character and antecedents of the permit holder." It added, however, that such a permit did not authorize him to carry local fares within Delhi.

Police investigators have been scathing in describing their dealings with Uber. Verma said he was unable to find any contact number or email address for Uber on its web pages and finally located its headquarters by booking an Uber cab and asking to be taken to the company's head office, which turned out to be several rooms in a hotel. He said he was not able to get any information about Friday's bookings for five hours because the database was in New York.

Verma also said that Uber had failed to demand that Yadav show a badge, which can only be acquired by submitting to a criminal background check. He said Uber had registered Yadav under an inaccurate residential address, had not registered his vehicle as a cab, and had not installed a global positioning system in the vehicle, which is mandatory for commercial taxis.