Mumbai BJP honours Uber driver who reported anti-caa protester
MUMBAI: The Mumbai unit of the BJP on Saturday honoured an Uber driver with “Alert Citizen Award” for reporting a passenger who he thought was having a telephone conversation about the anti-citizenship (Amendment) Act.
The driver, Rohit Gour, works with taxi-aggregator app Uber, which temporarily suspended him and is investigating the incident. Gour said he had received a call from state BJP chief Mangal Prabhat Lodha’s personal assistant at around noon, asking him to meet at the Santacruz police station. “Lodha said he would talk to Uber to reactivate my ID,” said Gour who was garlanded at the station and was told to hold a paper that read “Alert Citizen Award”. A close aide of Lodha’s said the ‘award’ was made on the spot and no cash reward was given to Gour.
“I felicitated Gour on behalf of the people of Mumbai for being an alert citizen. He spotted an antiwas national conspiracy and should be appreciated for his action,” said Lodha. On Wednesday, Gour was driving poet Bappadittya Sarkar to Juhu when he overheard the latter talk about anticaa protests. He started recording Sarkar’s conversation after he heard mention of Shaheen Bagh, the site of an anti-caa protest in New Delhi. Gour took a detour and, on the pretext of withdrawing cash from ATM, stopped the cab at Santacruz police station and reported Sarkar.
Jaipur resident Sarkar, who visiting Mumbai, said his phone conversation had been about protest culture in cities and public discomfort.
An officer from the Santacruz police station said on condition of anonymity, “We examined the audio clip which the Uber driver had recorded. We found nothing in our inquiry.” Responding to Gour being felicitated by BJP, Sarkar said, “It is making people believe I am a terrorist, and if I am, I should be in jail. But I am not behind bars. That means, I haven’t done anything wrong.”