New Delhi: A senior lawyer has alleged that the driver of a taxi in Delhi, booked through Ola Cabs, subjected him to Islamophobic remarks and criminal intimidation due to his Muslim faith. While the company said it has suspended the driver from the platform, it has not yet responded to any of the specific queries the complainant raised about the company’s passenger safety policies, whether the driver’s suspension was temporary or permanent, and the safeguards in place to prevent communal targeting and intimidation of passengers. The incident took place on March 15, 2026. Saif Mahmood, an advocate in the Supreme Court, said he had booked a taxi via Ola at 5:22 pm to travel from south Delhi’s Greater Kailash area to the Max Mueller Bhavan in central Delhi. While booking, he said, the driver’s name initially appeared as ‘Shri Ram’ on the app. However, when he later went to check his ride history, that name had disappeared. “Shortly after the ride commenced, the driver began chatting with me. He told me he was from Kanpur and boasted about how he knows to treat people with respect, unlike the ‘Jats’ in Delhi. He then said, ‘Lekin koi ulti baat kare to ilaaj to karna padta hai (But if someone speaks out of line, then they have to be dealt with),” Mahmood told The Wire, adding that the driver claimed to be a “Sanatani”.What followed, he said, was a series of criminal acts narrated by the driver, claimed as acts of justice.“He started proudly narrating an incident in which he claimed to have brutally beaten up a Muslim passenger because they were eating non‑vegetarian food in his vehicle,” he said. The driver only described this passenger as “Ansari-wansari”, Mahmood said.“The driver went on to boast that while travelling from Delhi towards Moradabad, he stopped at a Vaishno dhaba and beat up the passenger and that others present at the dhaba also joined him to beat up the passenger and break his legs.“He alleged that he had threatened this passenger against doing so and told them ‘Unko tukdo tukdo me kaat dunga (I would cut them up in pieces)’,” Mahmood recalled, noting how the driver recounted the entire episode with striking pride, glorifying the violence at every step.The driver did not stop at this, Mahmood said, and that he then started narrating another incident.“He claimed to have similarly assaulted another individual in Noida, insinuating that the second victim was also Muslim. He also claimed that this passenger was talking about Bajrang Dal, which is when he decided to beat him up,” he said.“At multiple points, the driver made remarks that revealed this was a deliberate, targeted display of Islamophobia. He repeatedly emphasised the Muslim identity of those he claimed to have assaulted and even stated that the Uttar Pradesh government was ‘doing well to teach such people a lesson’,” Mahmood added.Mahmood has sent an official legal notice to Ola, detailing the incident in an email to Ola’s management and to the CEO, Bhavish Aggarwal. He expressed concern for “the safety of the public at large and the unchecked propagation of communal violence” by individuals operating under the platform.A screengrab of the e-mail sent by Saif Mahmood to Ola. Photo: The Wire.An email and a call from OlaMahmood said he expected a response from a senior authority at Ola, given the gravity of the incident. Instead, he received a standard email from support@olacabs.com at 10:44 am: “We are sorry you had such an unpleasant experience in the Ola ride… We try to make our customer’s travel experience easy and enjoyable, and in this case, we clearly fell short.“We have suspended the driver in question from the Ola platform for their unsafe behavior. Your safety is our top priority, and we appreciate your feedback.“Should you need any further assistance? Please use our self-serve or in-app support option.” He responded to the mail, calling it “wholly unacceptable” and inadequate given the seriousness of the issues raised..Later, at 5:30 pm, Mahmood said he received a support call. “I received a call from the security supervisor who told me that Ola has done whatever it can do about my complaint. On my specific query regarding Ola’s non-discrimination and safety policy, he informed me that Ola cannot share company policies with me,” he told The Wire.He added, “When I told him about the legal course I would need to take in such a case, the supervisor just said, ‘You can take legal action’. So I am.”The Wire has reached out to Ola seeking details of the action it has taken. This story will be updated upon receiving a response.“This is a clear case of intimidation,” Mahmood said. ”The driver may or may not have even done the things he claimed to have done but he wanted to scare me. He knew my name when he booked the ride.”“People will get scared of even getting a cab ride if such instances keep repeating. And their [Ola’s] response was as if I’ve complained about something like being overcharged. This is much bigger,” he said.Not the first incidentThe Wire has come to know that a similar incident happened on a cab-hailing app with another passenger of Muslim faith in Lucknow a year ago.Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the passenger said, “It was a mix of misogynistic harassment combined with Islamophobia. It was an auto. I was with my mother. As soon as he started the ride, he started making verbal commentary about how ‘women like us’ would book an auto.”According to this passenger, the driver implied in several ways that they were not welcome on this ride. She said he spoke at length about a woman, “possibly Muslim”, who would take his friend to buy her beer, and about another incident where he refused to drop a woman at her destination, and when she reported him he filed a counter-complaint, and mobilised a 2,000-member drivers’ WhatsApp group to blacklist her.“He also kept talking about how he was a part of a much larger network and they were going to make life difficult for people,” she said. “He was basically letting me know that after this harassment, if I decided to file a complaint, he has the wherewithal and network to ensure that I can never get a taxi again in the city.”“My mother and I were getting really upset. I no longer wanted him to drop me home and ended the ride halfway. When I told him that I had just changed my mind, he was unfazed and said, ‘Good, you should have done it at the outset,’” she added, recalling how the incident left her shaken for days.A report by The Quint in 2018 also narrated a similar incident, when Ola fired a driver for refusing to drop a Muslim customer at his preferred location. At the time, the company also issued a public apology over the incident on Twitter (now X).Another incident was reported about a passenger cancelling his Ola ride as his driver was Muslim. The company had then tweeted that like India, they too were a ‘secular platform’. This time, in Mahmood’s case, there has been no such public statement from the company.