(Bloomberg) -- Uber Technologies Inc. was sued in the U.S. by a woman who accused one of its drivers in India of raping and beating her during a ride home last month, an incident that led to the shut down of the service in New Delhi.
The woman said Uber’s background check procedures and other safety measures are woefully inadequate and fall well short of what is required by transportation providers in India, according to the complaint filed Thursday in federal court in San Francisco, where the company is based.
“While Uber lures customers with promises of a ’commitment to safety,’ its only real commitment is to increase its profits by quickly expanding into the most densely populated markets before its competitors, even where it is well aware that its customers are being put in harm’s way,” said the woman, who is identified only as Jane Doe in the complaint.
Uber, which lets users order rides from private drivers through its mobile phone app, is facing numerous regulatory roadblocks and claims of sexual assault and dangerous driving. The company, founded in 2009 valued at $40 billion in December, said in November it was assessing its safety programs.
The 26-year-old rider said she was raped by an Uber driver in India’s capital after she fell asleep in the taxi on Dec. 6. That came days before the second anniversary of a December 2012 gang rape and murder of a student, which shocked the nation and prompted India to increase penalties for sexual assault. The country is Uber’s largest market outside the U.S.
Uber couldn’t help police track down the driver, who turned out to have been accused of rape and sexual assaults previously, according to the complaint. The driver was arrested while he was on the verge of fleeing to Nepal, according to the complaint.
When Uber sought to start business again in New Delhi weeks later and while the criminal trial against the driver was ongoing, the woman said she received an e-mail from Uber offering her a discount.
The woman accused the company of negligence, fraud, and battery among other claims, and seeks unspecified damages.
“Our deepest sympathies remain with the victim of this horrific crime,” Uber said Thursday in an e-mailed statement. “We are cooperating fully with the authorities to ensure the perpetrator is brought to justice.”
Shiv Kumar Yadav, the driver accused of the rape, is a resident of the city of Mathura, 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of New Delhi.
He provided Uber with a forged character certificate from Delhi police stating that he never had been involved in a crime, the woman alleged. Because the use of such forged certificates is widespread, major taxi companies in Delhi routinely conduct their own background checks, according to the complaint.
The case is Doe v. Uber Technologies Inc., 15-cv-00424, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).
To contact the reporter on this story: Edvard Pettersson in Federal court in Los Angeles at
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net Peter Blumberg, Joe Schneider
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