Driver ‘abandons’ female staffer at night, arrested

A cab driver employed by a well-known business process-outsourcing firm was arrested for “abandoning” a female employee a kilometre away from her south Delhi home in the dead of night.

A cab driver employed by a well-known business process-outsourcing firm was arrested for “abandoning” a female employee a kilometre away from her south Delhi home in the dead of night.

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A police patrolling party in Aman Vihar spotted a woman walking down a road all alone in the B Block around 4.30am.

“ASI Subhash Chand and constable Virender were on patrolling duty in the A and B Block when they noticed a car drop a woman on the main road at a deserted spot around a kilometre away from her house,” said Gaurav Sharma, additional DCP (southeast).

“The girl was walking down the deserted road alone when the police personnel spotted her and approached her. She narrated her plight to the officers and the cab that had dropped her was chased down after she was safely escorted home,” Sharma said.

The driver of the cab, who has been identified as Sunil Kumar, a resident of Faridabad, was arrested on the spot for violating prohibitory orders issued under the Criminal Procedure Code.

According to police estimates, between 2,700 and 3,000 call centre cabs ply on Delhi streets on a daily basis.

Their drivers are supposed to follow several guidelines to ensure the safety of female passengers they are deputed to drop home.

However, as HT has reported on February 7, only a handful of errant cab drivers could be prosecuted throughout the year 2012.

“Given the manpower crunch that the force suffers from and other initiatives to increase visibility that have recently been put in place, actual prosecution under the Motor Vehicles (MV) Act has given way to verbal warnings to get their act straight,” an officer explained.

If any cab driver is found violating any of these norms, he becomes liable to be fined under Section 188 of the MV Act.

Instructions to this effect had been issued after 30-year-old call centre employee hailing from Mizoram had been gang-raped in late December 2010.