The Mumbai Police, while conducting background checks of drivers employed with private taxi services in the city, have found a large number of instances where incomplete addresses and even incomplete names have been registered in the company records. On December 10 last year, the Mumbai Police had launched a massive campaign to conduct a background check for all taxi drivers in the city, yellow top and private, in light of the rape of a female passenger by an Uber cab driver in Delhi. The police had at the time collected data of more than two lakh badge holders registered with the Regional Transport Offices (RTOs) as well as over 23,000 drivers employed with 23 private taxi services in the city. The deadline set for the exercise was December 31 last year. However, the police have encountered bumps in the very first stage of the process due to incomplete data. “While going through the data, we realised that a lot of it is incomplete, and in some cases even full names have not been taken down by the companies. The addresses that we are finding in the records are, in a lot of cases, nothing more than the name of a chawl or a chowk in Mumbai. Verifying addresses of the taxi drivers is next to impossible based on such data,” said an officer with the Special Branch, which is spearheading the campaign. The officer added that a report of all such instances was being compiled simultaneously as the drive progressed, and after the drive was complete, the companies would be asked about the incomplete record keeping. After inquiries into this aspect were complete, action against the companies would be decided upon. Deputy Commissioner of Police Sanjay Shintre confirmed that instances of incomplete information had been found and they were slowing down the process. Shintre said, “We are contacting the police stations concerned where the drivers claim to be staying to cross check the addresses that they have given, and then sending our personnel to physically verify the address. Additionally, we are also speaking to two people staying in the area to know more about the driver and checking his names against our records for any kind of complaint registered against him.” “It is a lengthy process and it will take some time. We are focusing on private taxi drivers first and will then move on to yellow tops,” he said.
