A woman traveling home in an online cab was allegedly molested by the driver just a few kilometres from Navi Mumbai airport, with the accused attempting to pull off her clothes inside the moving vehicle. Following her complaint, the Navi Mumbai Airport police station has booked cab driver Mohammad Afzal Sheikh under multiple sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. Police say the incident took place late Saturday night on the airport's service road. The accused remains at large, and officers are using mobile location tracking and other technical means to trace him.
Cab halted on the service road while she was heading home from Chembur
According to the complaint, the victim had gone to Chembur to attend a party with friends, and one of them booked an online cab for her return journey to her home in Panvel. She was travelling alone in the back seat when, around 1:30 am, the cab reached the service road roughly two kilometres before the airport. The driver allegedly pulled over on the pretext of wanting to drink water and stepped out of the vehicle. Moments later he returned, but instead of getting back behind the wheel, he climbed into the back seat beside her. She alleges that he then grabbed her hand and tried to forcibly remove her clothes.
She screamed for help but the road was deserted
The woman told police she screamed as loudly as she could to fend him off, but there was no one around on the isolated stretch to hear her. She eventually managed to open the door and get out of the car, then called her family to tell them what had happened. She first went to the Panvel police station to lodge a complaint, but since the spot falls under the jurisdiction of the Airport police station, Panvel police drove her there themselves, and it was only at the Airport station that the case was formally registered.
Cab safety for women again under the scanner
The case has reignited concerns over how safe online cab rides really are for women travelling alone late at night. It has also renewed scrutiny of the safety measures cab aggregators and related agencies claim to have in place for passengers passing through deserted or poorly lit stretches, and whether those measures actually work in practice. Police say the hunt for the driver is being pursued on multiple fronts, with investigators leaning on his phone's location data and other technical leads to track him down, even as they continue examining additional evidence gathered from the scene.
