Be ready to lie if you hire a cab

Imagine lying to the cops to help your radio taxi driver break the law. Sounds bizzare? Well, that’s exactly what drivers associated with some leading app-based cab services in the city are expecting their passengers to do. Ever since the High Court’s ban on the use of diesel vehicles by these cab service, passengers have been facing a flurry of unreal requests from drivers to help them dodge the law.

Anuj Sharma, an engineer, who used a popular cab service shares, “Soon after pressing the ‘start journey’ button on the billing device, my cab driver gave me the device, saying: ‘Yeh seat ke pichey ki pocket mein rakh lo, police wale aajkal checking kar rahein hai ji. Diesel gaadi allowed nahi hai’.”

Another regular with the cab service, Pooja Gupta, a student, tells us that her driver went one step further. “He insisted that I hide the device in my handbag. He even expected me to lie to the police. ‘Agar koi police wala rok le checking ke liye, toh aap kehna ki private taxi book ki thi apne’ were his exact words,” she recalls, adding that she was shocked but helpless. “I unwillingly became a part of this lie as it was late at night, and I just wanted to get home safe,” she says. Yashika Mathur, a journalist, also had a similar experience. “The driver told me that if a traffic police guy stops the cab, I must tell him that I have hired the cab from a local taxi stand and not from the radio service,” she says.

And this isn’t the story of just one cab service. Anjuri Nayar Singh, another journalist who booked a cab via another popular app, shares: “I had taken a cab from Pitampura to CP. The cab driver requested me, ‘Police rokey to kehna ki Gurgaon se cab book ki hai. Company ka naam mat lena madam. Aajkal checking bohot ho rahi hai’. However, I was clear that I would tell him off if the cops stopped the car.”

Some names have been changed on request