Uber ‘ready to settle civil lawsuit’ with Indian woman who accused app company of unlawfully obtaining her medical records’ after a company driver allegedly raped her
- Uber has agreed to settle a civil lawsuit
- Indian woman accused the ride-hailing company of engaging in offensive conspiracy theories after she reported rape
- Incident in New Delhi triggered scrutiny into Uber by the Indian government and the company was banned from operating in the Capital till 2015
- It emerged that Eric Alexander, the president of business in the Asia Pacific, had obtained her medical records and shown them to executives
- See more news from India at www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome
Uber has agreed to settle a civil lawsuit with an Indian woman who accused the ride-hailing company and its top executives of unlawfully obtaining medical records and engaging in offensive conspiracy theories after a company driver allegedly raped her, according to reports.
The 2014 incident in New Delhi had triggered scrutiny into Uber by the Indian government and the company was banned from operating in the national Capital till June 2015.
The 26-year-old woman, identified only as Jane Doe in the lawsuit filed in the federal court in California in June, had said in the complaint that Uber executives unlawfully obtained and shared her medical records from that sexual assault.
A driver working for Uber in Delhi, India, waits to receive instructions for his next passenger
The woman was living in Texas when she filed the lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed days after it emerged that Eric Alexander, the president of business in the Asia Pacific, had obtained her medical records and shown them to then Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick and company’s then senior vice-president for business Emil Michael. Michael’s name was later dropped from the lawsuit.
The company later fired Alexander. The lawsuit was settled in San Francisco where Uber has its headquarters, the BBC reported
Terms of the latest settlement have not been disclosed. A Delhi court in 2015 sentenced Uber driver Shiv Kumar Yadav to life imprisonment for raping the woman.
A woman uses the Uber app to hail a ride. The company was banned from operating in India’s capital between 2014 and June 2015
The lawsuit said that after the woman’s sexual assault, Alexander went directly to Delhi where he managed to obtain her confidential, private medical records generated by physicians who examined her after the brutal rape.
Alexander then showed the records to Kalanick and Michael and the three discussed the records among themselves and with other staff at Uber, speculating that Plaintiff had made up the brutal rape in collusion with a rival of Uber in India.