New Delhi: In a blow to Uber, the multi-billion dollar global cab service, a woman who alleged that a driver working for Uber had raped her in New Delhi has supposedly demanded a ‘hefty’ payout to a tune of Rs. 100 crore.
The laywer of the victim,New York-based Wigdor LLP, is seeking a compensation for the incident that took place on December 6 and led to a ban on taxi’s services in the national capital.
Uber and other taxi aggregators Ola and TaxiForSure have since been forced to comply with amended radio taxi laws and obtain licences to operate in the city.
“My client’s goal is to make sure that nobody else is sexually attacked by an Uber driver and that she be fairly compensated for what Uber permitted to happen,” Douglas H. Wigdor, a partner at the law firm said.Â
While Wigdor declined to discuss specifics of the compensation and Uber declined to comment.Â
Uber, which in the immediate aftermath of the incident had indicated that it would be willing to ‘help’ the victim financially and aid in her recovery, is not likely to shell out the steep compensation being sought now, according to one source.Â
The jurisdiction of the case is one major challenge that the victim may face in pursuing her claim according to lawyers, all of whom are practising in India.
Wigdor represented the maid who settled out of court with former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The compensation was speculated to be worth $6 million.
Uber has been registered as a witness in the ongoing case in India, where the alleged rapist Shiv Kumar Yadav is being tried. This is not the first instance where Uber has been sued for damage caused by its registered drivers. Last March, a woman passenger in Chicago sued the company on the count that a driver registered with the company had sexually assaulted her and refused to let her out of the cab.Â
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