"My wife jumped out of it and the whole cab caught fire," Mr Kaul says on Facebook. Image Courtesy: iStock
A woman allegedly had to jump out of a radiocab after it caught fire in Delhi late Tuesday. "My family would have ended last night," says her husband Kapil Kaul in a Facebook post addressed to taxi service EasyCabs. In a post shared on August 19, he narrates the harrowing experience his wife Prachi went through after the taxi they were in allegedly went up in flames. EasyCabs, however, denies that the car caught fire, though admitting that there was smoke.
"Last night (18th August 2015) my wife took your cab from Delhi Domestic airport terminal 1, with taxi number DL1RX6610. Little to our knowledge that you do not even care how your taxies are maintained," Mr Kaul writes on Facebook.
Mr Kaul claims the cab stopped abruptly and as the driver, named Jaypal, tried to re-start it, passing vehicles stopped to ask the passengers to exit as the car had been on fire for the past three or four kilometers. "My wife jumped out of it and the whole cab caught fire," Mr Kaul says on Facebook.
Mr Kaul also accuses EasyCabs of not responding to the call he made to them. "After all this I lodged a complaint with your call center in the feedback department where they said somebody will call you by 10:00am in the morning, but not to my surprise, nobody bothered," he said.
This was the response he received to his post on Facebook:
A spokesperson for EasyCabs refutes Mr Kaul's claim that the car caught fire. "On the eve on the 18th of August 2015, when one of our cabs carrying a passenger moved a little distance, the driver observed a smell in the cab and halted. The passenger was then asked to move out of the vehicle since the driver observed an irregularity and smoke from the bonnet," EasyCabs told NDTV via email.
They also mention that since the cab was deemed "unfit" to travel in, the passenger was offered an alternate vehicle as well. The passenger though made their own arrangements.
"We expressed our sincere regret to the customer and shared complete details of the incident and our investigations with the family," they said.
A report in news agency PTI claimed that documents showed the car had not been serviced in two years, since April 2013. The cab company said this wasn't true and that the car had been on serviced on August 17, a day before the incident. EasyCabs explained away the smoke billowing out of the bonnet as "a case of sudden irregularity." They also shared images of the car clicked a day after Mr Kaul's post on Facebook.
"We would also like to state that while we have been providing all required information and proofs, we have been receiving demands of "Compensation" from the complainant," they said in their email to NDTV, adding, "We would like to assure all our customers that we as EasyCabs, continue to be responsible and safe Radio Taxi providers and will always strive towards meeting our customers' expectations."
Meanwhile, Mr Kaul writes in his Facebook post that his wife "is in so much trauma, she doesn't want to leave home or us."
Read his entire post here: