Couple strangles Uber driver, chops body in pieces, dumps remains in Greater Noida drain

In a macabre incident, a couple allegedly murdered an Uber driver, chopped his body into pieces and tried to dump the remains in a Greater Noida drain to run away with his cab. The Delhi Police has arrested the couple from Uttar Pradesh’s Amroha. According to an IANS report, the accused have been identified as 34-year-old Farhat Ali and 30-year-old Seema Sharma. The couple had boarded the cab from Madangir in New Delhi. They had told the victim that they wanted to travel to Kapashera.

The police began the investigation after victim Ram Govind’s wife lodged a missing complaint in the Shakarpur Police Station. "During investigation, we found it was a blind case as there were no witnesses. The last ride of the cab was booked from Madangir to Kapashera border and thereafter the GPS device was found to have stopped working," Deputy Commissioner of Police Vijayanta Arya was quoted as saying.

According to the police probe, Ali and Sharma booked the cab on January 29. They told the victim that they will first go to their Ghaziabad home. On the way, the couple hatched the plan to murder Govind and run away with his car. After befriending him, the accused offered him spiked tea. Later they strangled him, cut the body in pieces. “Next day, they arranged a cutter and blades in order to cut the body into small pieces and wrapped it three separates bundles. They later threw them in a drain at Greater Noida,” the official said.

The shocking incident comes days after the cab-hailing company issued a warning to its passengers. Uber said that it will now remove riders who despite repeated warnings misbehave or damage the driver or co-passenger's property, as per the updated community guidelines. The US-based company has also added a 'Driver Safety Toolkit' - designed on the lines of a similar offering for riders - to offer a suite of in-app safety features for its driver-partners in India. "Courtesy matters. Riders are expected to exercise good judgement and behave decently towards other people in the car when riding with Uber... Riders may lose access to Uber if they don't meet the star ratings requirements set out in the community guidelines," Uber Head of Cities (India and South Asia) Prabhjeet Singh had said.