B’LURU WOMAN SAYS OLA DRIVER MOLESTED HER

A driver of app-based cab aggregator Ola allegedly molested a woman in the Karnataka capital when she was heading home from work around 2.30am on Friday.

The woman, who is a professional singer, alleged that the cabbie veered off the route shown on his Ola-approved mobile phone map after driving for a while and stopped at a deserted spot. He then turned around and groped her, the woman said in her complaint.

The sudden assault left her speechless for a moment but she regained her wits, screamed and fought back, before managing to get off the car and run towards to a medical clinic nearby, she said.

She called a friend from the clinic. By then, the suspect had allegedly driven away. Police have registered a case and launched a hunt to catch the suspect. Additional commissioner of police Hemanth Nimbalkar said the accused is on the run. “We have formed a special team to nab the culprit.”

Ola said in a statement that it had terminated the services of the driver after it received the complaint.

“Safety of users is of utmost importance to us and we have zero tolerance towards any such behaviour,” it said. The cab aggregator assured the woman its support in the investigation.

Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh on Monday triggered a controversy alleging that the Telangana police were trapping Muslim youth by encouraging them to join Islamic State.

In a series of tweets, Singh, who is the Congress in charge of Telangana and neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, alleged that the police in the southern state had set up a bogus ISIS site and were posting inflammatory information to trap young Muslim men.

“It was on their information that MP (Madhya Pradesh) police arrested accused who were responsible for the bomb blast in a train at Shajapur district of MP. It also resulted in Saifullaha encounter in Kanpur the same day,” he said.

The senior Congress leader and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister was talking about a suspected IS man who was killed in an anti-terror operation in Lucknow in early March.

Singh, who was on Saturday relieved of Karnataka and Goa charge for his inept handling o party units, questioned if Telan gana chief minister K Chan drasekhar Rao had authorised his police to ensnare Muslim youth.

It is not clear what brought abou the outburst from the Congress leader who addressed a public meeting in Telangana’s War angal district on Sunday.