‘I’d like to kidnap you’: Gurgaon resident reports Uber driver’s ‘cargo behavior’ at 4am

A Gurgaon resident narrated a frightening encounter with an Uber driver that left her terrified and leading her to hastily retreat home in the wee hours of the morning. The incident was shared on Reddit by user kushpyro1, who posted a screenshot of the disturbing conversation with the driver.

In her post on the r/gurgaon subreddit, the user described her fear as she prepared to catch a train. “I’m shaking as I write this right now. I have a train in an hour and God knows if I will get there in time,” they wrote, explaining that they had booked a Priority Sedan taxi to the station.

As the driver approached, the user decided to check the OTP and opened the Uber chat where he found a bizarre message from the driver. The screenshot revealed a brief exchange: The driver texted, “I’m here. Leaving Anand Vihar Terminal. Please come,” to which the driver menacingly replied, “Go to Anand Vihar. I want to go and kidnap you happily.”

Expressing his panic, the user said: “I don’t know what impulse came over me (4am, barely any sleep and panicking after reading a text message from a man who was literally a few seconds in front of me), but I “Thought of canceling the taxi.” As they began to cancel the ride, the driver did the same and asked the user to flee back inside with his luggage. They managed to take a screenshot shortly before the cancellation.

While many Reddit users were disturbed by the message, some suspected that it may have been an autocorrect error. One user commented: “It looks like the autocorrect went wrong. But it’s good that you took another taxi. That was crazy,” while another speculated that it might be a translation issue, noting that the sentence didn’t make much sense.

Uber’s response

In a follow-up post, the user noted that he had tried several translations to clarify the driver’s message, but found that “kidnapping” was the only correct translation for the word “Apaharan.”

The user reported the incident to the Uber response team, who assured him that the driver would be banned from accepting or viewing his ride requests indefinitely. “We will contact the driver to understand the problem from his perspective. Disciplinary action may include making the driver aware of the impact of his actions/words or terminating his Uber account,” they added.