Ola fires driver who refused to drop passenger to a Muslim area

Cab aggregator Ola has fired a driver who refused to drop a passenger to Jamia Nagar, Delhi, as he claimed the area was Muslim-dominant and weird people lived there.

As per a report by Asian Age, 30-year-old Asad Ashraf, a journalist by profession, hired an Ola cab to return home after celebrating Eid on Sunday.

However, as soon as Ashraf boarded the cab and gave the OTP to Ashok Kumar, the driver, Kumar realised that Ashraf's destination was Jamia Nagar and started driving in the wrong direction.

On being confronted the driver spoke rudely to Ashraf and called Jamia Nagar a filthy locality. He also asked the journalist to get off and threatened him with dire consequences if he refused to do so. Then he dropped Ashraf at a secluded spot and sped off.

Ashraf immediately raised an emergency alarm on the app – a feature provided by Ola. He also got a call from an executive from Ola ensuring immediate action. However, when no action was taken even after one hour, Ashraf filed a complaint with Delhi Police.

Ashraf also tweeted the details of the incident, invoking strong reactions from Twitterati, who slammed Ola for taking timely action.

@Olacabs your driver would have killed me for being a Muslim today. Where are your ethics ? @DelhiPolice . Screenshot of my complaint is here. pic.twitter.com/tXSGFvHcZA

— Asad Ashraf (@AshrafAsad) June 17, 2018

Later Ola tweeted stating that they don't support any form of discrimination and that they have taken the driver off the roads.

Specific to the shocking Incident that happened last night, we have off-roaded the driver. Ola, like India, believes in secularity & will never allow any sort of discrimination amongst its customers & driver partners. We stand by our customer & deeply apologise for the incident. — Ola (@Olacabs) June 18, 2018