‘I pressed emergency 1,2,3...5...10 times,’ woman relives horror

The woman, Akanksha Hazari, founder and CEO of mPaani according to her Twitter handle, said she got into an Ola cab at Bengaluru airport at 11.31 pm on December 10. Though according to the app, the driver ought to have taken the toll road, he took a diversion and went through narrow and unlit back roads, claiming he had no cash to pay the toll charge, says Akanksha. 

Though an uneasy Akanksha protested and asked the driver to follow the app and take the toll road, the aggressive man asked her to get out of the car in the middle of nowhere that too in the dead of the night, she says. Scared, Akanksha says she pressed the emergency button and received a call from the Ola safety executive, who spoke to the driver and received an assurance from him that he would drop her at her location and that the executive was actively tracking her ride. 

However, when she continued with her ride following the exec’s assurance, the driver started to make phone calls and spoke in Kannada. He didn’t stop the car immediately to make the phone calls despite her request, she says. When he did stop the car, it was in a desolate spot with some men loitering nearby. Though the Ola exec had promised to track her ride, there was no call from him, despite the car stopping for more than a few minutes, she says. “I immediately start to press the emergency button again. 1..2...3...5...10 times, no call back. I call the police and give them the cars plate number. They ask where I am but I don’t know how to explain it. The call ends and I have no idea if they are coming or not,” she says. 

Panicked, she dialled the Ola service centre and narrated her ordeal again. When the driver attended his call, a new Ola safety executive, after a heated exchange, directs him to drop her at her destination and tells her to take the driver’s phone and put it on speaker so that he can monitor her journey as a ‘remote escort’. 

Finally, after a tense 30-45 minute ride when she had the driver’s phone with the Ola exec on live call, she was dropped at her destination, says Akanksha. Following the incident, Ola said, “We have given the driver a warning. He is on the road & we are monitoring him closely for anymore negative feedback,” she tweeted, adding, “However, there was no explanation for the safety exec who disappeared, the non-functioning emergency button, the total lack of follow up & the agent who insisted on charging me for completing my trip.”