An Uber taxi driver on Thursday allegedly drove away with the laptop of his customer, when the latter had gone to withdraw money from an ATM in Noida, Sector 18.
The customer named Himanshu Kaushik had booked a cab from his home in Noida's Sector 77 to New Friends Colony. At Sector 18, he got down from the cab and asked the cab driver to wait for five minutes as he wanted to withdraw some money from the ATM. Himanshu claimed that when he came back, the driver and the taxi was nowhere to be seen.
The man for whom the driver works, Ashutosh Balwaria, claimed that the driver waited for Himanshu for over 15 minutes. He said that the driver called the rider 3-4 times but when the customer did not answer the call, the driver left the location.
"Despite calling him a number of times there was no response from the driver's side. However, after 20 minutes he picked up the call and when I asked for the bag he disconnected it," Himanshu told IBNLive. Himanshu's call data records show he called the driver several times between 11:17 am till 11:57 am. The data also shows Chaman cancelled his calls 11 times.
Defending the driver for leaving, Ashutosh said that many-a-times, people leave without paying for the ride, so the driver thought that it was a similar case and thus he left the location.
Though Himanshu claims that he already had money in the e-wallet Paytm and there was no way he could have fled without paying for the ride.
Chaman claims that he got a call 35 minutes later when the rider asked his whereabouts. "He abused me and asked me where I am. He even threatened that he will get me thrown out of my job," Chaman said.
"He said his bag was in the taxi and it was then that I looked back to see a bag. I had not noticed it earlier as it was kept behind the driver's seat. I told him that I will come back and give him the bag but he used choicest of abuses against me. When I got back to Sector 18, he was standing there and had booked another cab to go to New Friends Colony. I tried giving him the bag but he refused to take it back and threatened me again," Chaman said.
The total ride time that the Uber receipt shows is 29 minutes. The driver claims that it took him just 8-9 minutes to reach Sector 18 from Sector 77, a distance of about 10 kms, and he waited for the remaining time.
Ashutosh said the driver has been blocked by Uber and they are probing the incident.
But on Saturday morning the customer claimed that a relative of the driver came to his residence and returned the laptop, which has once again been contested by Ashutosh.
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