Uber driver charged in rape of passenger
An Uber driver accused of raping a passenger admitted to police who found the “semi-conscious” and partially nude woman in his car early Sunday morning to having sex with the inebriated woman, but claimed she initiated it, investigators said.
“I know I’m in trouble. I had sex with her,” Ranjan Thapa, 26, told officers, according to a police report.
The driver’s statements along with the woman’s subsequent statements that she did not remember anything that occurred late that night nor had she ordered a vehicle from the ride-hailing service that night, led to a rape charge against Thapa, Boston police said.
Thapa, of Everett, pleaded not guilty yesterday in Roxbury District Court and was held on $10,000 bail.
According to a report from Boston police, Northeastern police stopped Thapa’s vehicle after he attempted to drive past two officers onto Hemenway Street. The officers were conducting a traffic stop.
Thapa told officers he was an Uber driver and his passenger was drunk and had urinated in the car, police said.
Officers then found “the female to be reclined in the passenger (seat) to be semi-conscious. The officers also observed the female’s pants ... unzipped and the back of her pants were pulled down,” a police report said.
A friend of the woman found the Northeastern officers and told them the women were drinking at a bar in South Boston when they became separated.
Thapa then told one of the officers he had sex with the woman, according to the police. Northeastern police, at that point, passed the investigation to Boston police.
The report said Thapa told investigators while he was being recorded at the South End office that he had picked up the woman in South Boston shortly before 11:30 p.m. Saturday. A man had to put her in his car, Thapa said. Once in his car, the woman refused to put her seat belt on and appeared to be drunk. The woman pulled down her pants and began urinating while in the passenger seat, Thapa claimed.
She also kept removing her seat belt, so Thapa told police he pulled over. He claimed that’s when she initiated sex by grabbing him and getting on top of him, the report said.
However, when police spoke to the woman about noon Sunday, she told them “she had been drinking throughout the day and has no memory of what happened to her” and that she “had no idea of how she got into the car.”
An Uber spokeswoman said in a statement, “What police describe is deeply troubling. The driver has been removed from the app, and we stand ready to assist the Boston Police Department with their investigation.” She said the company’s guidelines prohibit “inappropriate sexual conduct.”