Uber Charged by Police With Cheating, Defying Laws: 10 Developments

Uber executives were questioned today by investigators for the second day in a row.

Uber was banned from operating in and around the capital by the Delhi government yesterday.

The police says the company ignored basic safety checks like scrutinizing the police record of the driver now arrested for rape. His taxi was not equipped with GPS either.

The government says that Uber violated the law by running its business despite the fact that it had not registered as a taxi service. However, it has no explanation for why it did not intervene earlier - services like Uber and Ola, another web-based taxi service, have been advertising their services for months.

Along with Uber, nearly 20 other cab services are likely to be blacklisted by the Delhi government, leaving thousands of drivers unemployed, and cutting off women from a service that was seen as safe.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh has today written to all states to consider banning internet-based taxi services. However, Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari commented that "Banning services is not a solution to the problem."

Uber executives questioned by the police have ceded that they did not verify the background of the driver, Shiv Kumar Yadav, who joined the firm six months ago.

He had a permit to operate a taxi issued by the Transport Department, but the police says that the documents used to obtain that permit were forged and did not refer to an earlier rape case against Yadav.

The police have ordered an enquiry to determine how the papers were forged and accepted by officials.

In 2011, Yadav spent seven months in jail for allegedly raping a woman who worked at a pub in Gurgaon but he was later acquitted, the police said.