India's Sexual Stigma: Delhi cab driver fired for 'masturbating while driving'

NEW DELHI (Web Desk) - A woman passenger has accused a taxi driver of indulging in obscene acts while driving her last week from Saket in South Delhi to Faridabad, a suburb of Haryana, NDTV reported on Wednesday.

“As I was roughly 25 minutes from my destination, the driver got impatient and started driving brashly. Moreover he seemed extremely restless, anxious, and kept mumbling something to himself,” the woman wrote in a Facebook post on July 2.

#PSA #OlaCabs #TaxiForSure #Uber #Unsafe #Delhi #Cab #Driver Please read and RT. pic.twitter.com/QUVtcic8Mc

— Miss Aurora (@LadyOldMonk) July 2, 2015

“I discontinued my call and asked him to drive properly in the most polite manner possible. I was about to make another call when I noticed that he was masturbating while driving.”

However, she is yet to file any complaint with the police.

In her post, the woman demanded that action be taken against Devinder Kumar, the driver of app-based cab service TaxiForSure, saying that should be sent to jail.

"We have not received any complaint in this regard and will act after we get a formal complaint from the victim," said a senior police officer.

She said that she confronted the driver when she reached her destination.

"He (the driver) had a smile on his face that will haunt me for nights to come. A psychotic man with a severe clinical imbalance for a driver is nothing but dangerous," she said in the post.

When she called Ola Cabs to report the incident, she was directed to TaxiForSure whose call centre executive told her that "action will be taken against the driver in 24 hours."

In her tweet, she said that she met two representatives of TaxiForSure who informed her about the termination of service of the accused driver. "So I met 2 reps frm @TFSCares at my office today who ensured they've fired the driver in question (sic). My only question to them: Is it enough?" she said on the micro-blogging site.

"The incident was regrettable. We have terminated the driver. He has been blacklisted by our company," a spokesperson for TaxiForSure said.

The alleged incident came weeks after a 21-year-old woman passenger accused a driver of Uber, another app-based cab service, of "trying to kiss and molest" her.