Uber auto driver snatches woman’s phone, grabs her hand over online payment in Bengaluru

Tussles between ridesharing apps and commuters continued in Bengaluru this week with a fresh incident going viral. The latest altercation saw an Uber driver snatch a woman's phone and grab her hand amid a war of words over online payment. 

The conflict arose soon after two women boarded the auto from Whitefield around 9:30 pm. The driver insisted on being paid through UPI or cash — something that proved impossible for his passengers to comply with. The duo had been unable to change their payment method from Uber Money to cash despite making multiple attempts throughout the ride. She also informed the driver that payment had been made through Uber Money since they could not change it to cash.

“Once she started moving towards gate the auto driver just grabbed her hand and started arguing that money hasn’t reached him and so on. She kept explaining the payment is done and she even showed the screenshot that payment has been made. The auto driver got very angry and snatched her phone…” her husband recalled in a Reddit post.

The Reddit user said his wife had shouted for the guards after her phone was snatched but all efforts to reason with the driver failed. She also remained unable to call anyone for help and ultimately other members of the apartment came down to mediate.

“…partment folks came down and started trying to calm the auto driver down but he wouldn’t listen. The police was called and when the police arrived even then he wouldn’t give her phone back. The police were taking the auto driver side the whole time. If somehow it was my wife’s fault. Then one of the resident called me and I went running,” he added.

The phone was eventually returned to the woman some 30 minutes into the spat while they were at the police station. The driver was eventually detained overnight

“He kept arguing that he was right and kept lying that he hadn’t touched her at all. We kept our stance and we took the guy to the station and raised an FIR against him. He kept the same argument that he didn’t do anything wrong. After realising that this is leading to his arrest he started saying sorry and all. All this went till 2 am in the morning,” he added.