Dalit Cab Driver Suspended by Rapido for “99 Years 11 Months” After Confronting Passengers Over Alleged Caste Slur — Reinstated a Day Later

A 30-year-old Dalit cab driver in Lucknow says he was suspended from the Rapido platform for nearly a century — 99 years and 11 months — after he ordered four passengers out of his vehicle for repeatedly using a casteist slur against a railway officer during their ride. Rapido reversed the suspension roughly a day after he visited the company’s office in person, but only after a video of the confrontation had gone viral nationally, drawn threats and abuse toward him online, and — he says — before the company ever asked him for his side of the story.

What happened, according to Kumar

Ankit Kumar, a diploma holder in mechanical engineering who has driven a cab in Lucknow for about a year and a half, picked up four passengers — later identified as railway employees — from Utrahtia railway station on the morning of August 10, bound for Charbagh station. Speaking to Bahujan Lives Matter, Kumar said the passengers spent part of the ride discussing an officer at their workplace, whose post he described only by its abbreviation, “CCC,” declining to spell it out on the record to avoid stoking tension within the railway department. According to Kumar, the discussion turned into abuse of that officer, and twice included a casteist slur aimed at him.

“When they used caste-based words against him, I interrupted them and said, no, you can’t say that,” Kumar told Bahujan Lives Matter. He said he identifies with the same community the slur targeted, and that he asked the passengers to stop. When they continued, he said, he began recording on his phone — his car did not have a dashcam at the time — and told them, “You cannot decide someone’s position by their caste — what they’ll become or won’t.” He pulled over near Telibagh and asked the four to get out.

The video, filmed by Kumar, shows him repeatedly and angrily demanding to know how the passengers had used the slur, before a crowd gathers around the stopped car. Kumar told Bahujan Lives Matter and, separately, the YouTube channel National Janmat, that he had not expected the video to spread beyond his own social media following — he said he posted it so people within his own community would see that caste discrimination can come from within marginalized communities too, not to make it go viral nationally.

Kumar said that in the five days between the incident and the passengers’ own public response, he took no legal action against them — no FIR, no case, not even a notice. “If I wanted even one rupee from them, or meant them harm, would I have waited five days? Five minutes?” he told Bahujan Lives Matter, responding to online commenters who accused him of trying to extract money by threatening to invoke the SC/ST Act. As of his conversation with Bahujan Lives Matter, he said he had filed no FIR against the four passengers, and — despite a Dainik Jagran report he said claimed otherwise — no FIR had been filed against him either.

The passengers’ account

In a separate interview released by the Brajbhushan Markandey channel, the four passengers — railway employees who had just finished a shift — denied that any casteist slur was used. They said their conversation concerned “CCC,” which they identified as Chief Crew Controller, a supervisory railway post, in the context of a discussion about how leave is granted and denied, and said Kumar misheard or misconstrued the abbreviation. One of the four, referred to in that interview as the Guard or Senior Train Manager, said he himself belongs to the Chamar community and said he never heard any of the group use the slur Kumar describes. A second passenger, the Loco Pilot who sat in the front seat, said he identified himself to Kumar as belonging to a Scheduled Tribe during the confrontation. Collectively, the four said three of them belong to Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe communities and one is from an Other Backward Class background.

The four passengers said Kumar stopped the car, singled out the passenger in the back middle seat, and began filming and shouting without their having used any caste-based language, and that his raised voice and phone calls to acquaintances at the scene left them fearing a hostile crowd. They said they paid the full fare, left the scene by e-rickshaw without arguing further, and have since characterized the video as a deliberately built, camera-ready confrontation aimed at social media attention rather than a spontaneous response to discrimination. Kumar, for his part, told National Janmat that the group’s own account does not dispute that he asked them, on camera, why they hadn’t stopped their colleague from using the term if they were truly from the same community — and that they did not deny it in the moment.

Bahujan Lives Matter has not independently verified the disputed exchange beyond the video and the two parties’ accounts.

Rapido’s suspension — and reversal

Rapido suspended Kumar’s account on August 12. A screenshot of his Rapido Captain app reviewed by Bahujan Lives Matter shows the “Cab Economy – Intercity” service marked “Suspended,” with the reason listed as “Abuse/Double meaning conversation/Use of Profanities,” for a duration of 99 years and 11 months — set to end at 7:40 pm on 19 July 2126. Kumar said he went to Rapido’s office in Lucknow the same day; staff there told him the suspension followed his conduct toward the passengers and that he “shouldn’t have interfered.” He told them he had intervened because he belongs to the same community targeted by the slur, and that he would do so again.

“They had fifty excuses to remove me in fifty different ways,” Kumar told National Janmat. “But they didn’t ask me even once.”

According to Kumar, the suspension was lifted the day after his office visit — he said he received a notification around 11 am reactivating his account. A second screenshot reviewed by Bahujan Lives Matter shows the same “Cab Economy – Intercity” service listed as “Active.” The Times of India reported on August 16 that Rapido’s response to Kumar’s allegations “could not be immediately ascertained.” Bahujan Lives Matter has not yet obtained a statement from Rapido and will update this report if one is received.

The stakes for Kumar

Kumar is the sole earning member of his family; his father, a daily-wage laborer, has been ill for an extended period, and his mother and wife are both homemakers, he told National Janmat. He said the loss of his suspended income, even temporarily, was a serious hardship, and that he intends to look for other work if driving doesn’t remain viable. He described himself as a committed follower of the ideology of B.R. Ambedkar, Kanshiram, Jyotirao Phule, and Periyar, and said his personal YouTube and social media channels are built around Ambedkar’s name and image. “If anyone disrespects my community or these leaders, I can’t stay silent,” he told National Janmat. “That’s my nature. I can’t help it.”

He said the video’s spread brought both support — including messages from Bahujan samaj community members and, he said, calls from Bahujan samaj political figures — and a wave of abusive and threatening messages online. A #BoycottRapido trend also circulated online in the aftermath, which Kumar confirmed to Bahujan Lives Matter.

Understanding the legal backdrop

Kumar has not filed a police complaint, so this case has not (as of this report) proceeded under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 — the law that criminalizes intentional insult or humiliation of an SC/ST individual, including in a public place, with enhanced penalties beyond ordinary criminal law. Whether the alleged remarks would meet that law’s threshold is not something Bahujan Lives Matter is positioned to determine absent a police complaint and investigation; Kumar himself has said he chose not to pursue that route.

Separately, the episode raises questions about how ride-hailing platforms handle worker-conduct complaints: Kumar’s central grievance is not only the length of the suspension but that Rapido acted on the passengers’ complaint without seeking his account first — a due-process gap that gig-economy drivers across platforms have raised in other disputes. Bahujan Lives Matter is not aware of a specific regulatory requirement mandating platforms hear a driver’s side before acting, and this is worth verifying against current Motor Vehicle Aggregator Guidelines and any state-level gig-worker rules before publishing further reporting on the pattern.

Case status

As of this report: Rapido has restored the “Cab Economy – Intercity” service on Kumar’s account to active status, roughly a day after he raised the issue at their office, but has not issued a public statement addressing his allegations. No FIR has been filed by either Kumar or the four passengers, according to Kumar. The four passengers have publicly disputed his account of what was said inside the vehicle. Bahujan Lives Matter will continue to follow this case.