Woman Raped By Uber Driver In India Sues Company For Privacy Breaches

New lawsuit is also against Uber executives. 

A woman who was raped by her Uber driver in India has filed a new lawsuit against the ride sharing start-up, which includes three current and former executives.

The lawsuit has been launched partially in response to a story by tech website Recode. The website reveled that alleges that Uber and the executives obtained and mishandled her confidential medical records pertaining to the 2014 sexual assault in a bid to disprove and discredit her credibility. Emil Alexander, Uber’s top executive for the India region was reportedly fired last week, at least in part, in response to Recode’s reporting, and how he handled the sexual crime.

Executives apparently obtained victim’s medical records in a bid to prove she was part of a conspiracy against Uber.

The lawsuit has been launched partially in response to a story by tech website Recode. The website reveled that alleges that Uber and the executives obtained and mishandled her confidential medical records pertaining to the 2014 sexual assault in a bid to disprove and discredit her credibility. Emil Alexander, Uber’s top executive for the India region was reportedly fired last week, at least in part, in response to Recode’s reporting, and how he handled the sexual crime.

Jane Doe

Known only as ‘Jane Doe’ in the lawsuit, her lawyers wrote that the “Plaintiff is devastated by the acts of Uber and its executives, who have intruded into her very private medical records from her sexual assault and callously disregarded her privacy by sharing their contents across the Company.” The woman, a resident of Texas, has filed her lawsuit in the Northern District of California, and seeks damages for invasion of privacy and defamation.

The original assault took place in early December 2014, when an Uber driver took the woman to an isolated area and then raped her. A Delhi court found Shiv Kumar Yadav guilty of the attack in October 2015. Yadav was sentenced to life imprisonment for the crimes of rape and kidnapping. At the time the attack took place, the now convicted Uber driver, Yadav, was also facing several other charges, and was also awaiting trial for another alleged incident of rape.
Uber faced harsh criticism at the time for failing to perform effective background checks. ‘Doe,’ as most press refer to her, settled her first lawsuit against Uber in 2015, for an undisclosed sum.

Did Uber’s attempt to discredit victim?

Recode reported that Eric Alexander, Uber’s top executive for India, was fired only after they contacted the company about the story. According to Recode, the victim’s medical records were seen both by Uber boss, Travis Kalanick, and senior vice president, Emil Michael.
AT the time of the rape, Uber publicly expressed support for the victim, with Kalanick releasing a statement that read: “We will do everything, I repeat, everything to help bring this perpetrator to justice and to support the victim and her family in her recovery.”

High-profile scandals

The story is the latest in a series of high-profile scandals greatly affecting Uber. Last week, the company announced it had fired 20 people as the result of an independent investigation into a culture of sexual harassment and other misconduct at the company. This week, Kalanick also announced that he was taking an indefinite leave of absence from the company, partially in order to grieve for his mother who died in a boating accident last week, and partially to distance himself from Uber itself.