Another Uber Driver Charged After Locking Teen Girl In Cab, Demanding Sex

An Uber driver from Chicago was held on $100,000 bail Saturday over demanding sex from a 19-year-old girl after locking her inside the cab.

Muhammad Fahim, 44, was charged with three counts of unlawful restraint for the incident that happened July 14. After the teenage girl was picked up by Fahim, the passenger found the details of her logged request had somehow been deleted.

When the teen offered to pay her driver in cash, Fahim pressured her to have sex with him. When the passenger refused, Fahim refused to let her off his cab, repeatedly locking the doors, and driving around. The teenager jumped out of the moving cab, when the cab driver slowed down the car at one point, according to the assistant state's attorney Mikah Soliunas, Chicago Tribune reported. It was not clear, however, if the teen got hurt after jumping off the cab.

Uber spokesman confirmed to the Tribune that Fahim was removed as a driver. He also said the incident was “troubling.”

However, Uber was prompted to take the action more than a month after the incident. Law enforcement officers tracked the driver’s name to the incident when they stopped his vehicle for a traffic violation at the 500 block of North Dearborn Street, Chicago, on Thursday and ran a background check.

This is by no means the first incident of indecent behavior by an Uber driver that has made the headlines. In a similar incident, a woman living in the East Village neighborhood of New York accused her Uber driver of raping her after she fell asleep in the cab on Aug. 17.

The 47-year-old driver allegedly took the 31-year-old woman back to his apartment and sexually molested her after the latter passed out in his cab. When she woke up and realized that she was not in her apartment, she confronted the driver. According to Tribune Media affiliate New York's Pix 11, the driver simply said, "I used protection — please don't call the police.”

Earlier this month, Inspector Neil Billany, head of Metropolitan Police’s taxi and private hire team in the United Kingdom wrote a warning letter to Uber, accusing it of putting the reputation of its brand before the safety of its passengers. Among the cases cited by Billany’s letter was an instance where an Uber driver was allowed to retain his job even after an allegation of sexual assault against him.

As a result, the driver ended up committing a “more serious” act of sexual stack on a woman passenger later on. In another instance, a driver used pepper spray that he was carrying during a road-rage argument. “Firstly it seems they are deciding what to report (less serious matters/less damaging to reputation over serious offenses) and secondly by not reporting to police promptly they are allowing situations to develop that clearly affect the safety and security of the public,” Billany wrote in his letter, according to a report published by Fortune.

Uber has since denied the allegations made by the police. Uber's General Manager for London Tom Elvidge said in a blog post: "Uber does not routinely report incidents retrospectively to the police on behalf of others — we advise those involved to make a report themselves and then assist the police with any subsequent inquiries."

"We believe the choice of whether or not to make a police report should sit with the reporter/victim,” Elvidge said. "We understand that there could be all sorts of reasons why they may or may not wish to report the incident to the police and have worked closely with women’s advocacy groups on this issue.”