A woman has sued Uber Technologies Inc, its Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick and other senior officials for accessing her medical records relating to the case where an Uber driver in New Delhi had raped her in December 2014, Reuters reported. The lawsuit also cites media reports where Kalanick and others have doubted the complainant’s account.
“Uber executives duplicitously and publicly decried the rape, expressing sympathy for plaintiff, and shock and regret at the violent attack,” the lawsuit read, according to Reuters. “...while privately speculating, as outlandish as it is, that she had colluded with a rival company to harm Uber’s business.”
“No one should have to go through a horrific experience like this, and we are truly sorry that she’s had to relive it over the last few weeks,” Uber said in a statement on Thursday.
The complainant, who currently lives in Texas in the United States, filed the lawsuit days after it was reported that the head of Uber’s Asia Pacific business, Eric Alexander, was fired for getting hold of the her medical records. Alexander is believed to have shown the medical records to Kalanick and Uber’s Senior Vice President Emil Michael, and questions were raised about how he could have done so. It has been unclear as to when he came in possession of the medical records.
In 2015, the Uber driver, Shiv Kumar Yadav, had been convicted and given a life sentence for raping the woman in December 2014.
The report comes days after Kalanick took an indefinite leave of absence from running the company. Michael had also resigned from his post on Monday following pressure from the board of directors. The development had followed reports that the firm had laid off more than 20 employees following a company investigation into sexual harassment and other allegations.
Uber has been embroiled in several controversies lately. It faces a lawsuit from Google’s owner Alphabet over allegedly stealing trade secrets from them related to self-driving cars, and separately, a video showing Kalanick involved in an argument with an Uber driver, for which he had faced sharp criticism. The company’s Senior Vice President of Engineering Amit Singhal had resigned in February 2017 for failing to inform them a sexual harassment allegation made against him while he had worked at Google.
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