From ‘Chamar’ Slur to SC/ST Act Debate: How a Viral Lucknow Cab Row Was Recast Against Anti-Caste Politics

A Dalit cab driver in Lucknow has been suspended, and then reinstated, by ride hailing platform Rapido after a video showing him ordering four passengers out of his vehicle went viral nationally. The driver, Ankit Kumar, 30, says the passengers used a casteist slur against a colleague during the ride. Rapido suspended his account for 99 years and 11 months on August 12, two days after the incident, without contacting him for his account first, he says. The company reversed the suspension roughly a day after he visited its Lucknow office.

What happened, according to Kumar

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 a workplace officer, whose post he referred to only by its abbreviation, "CCC." He declined to spell out the full designation on the record, saying he did not want to add to tension within the railway department.

Kumar said the discussion turned into abuse of that officer and, twice, into a caste based 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 community targeted by the slur and asked the group to stop. When they continued, he said, he began recording on his phone (his car did not have a dashcam) 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. A crowd gathered around the car.

Kumar told Bahujan Lives Matter, and separately told the YouTube channel National Janmat, that he had not expected the video to travel 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 marginalised communities too, not to make it a national story.

In the five days between the incident and the passengers' public response, Kumar said 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 invoking the SC/ST Act. As of his conversation with Bahujan Lives Matter, he said no FIR had been filed against him either, despite a report in Dainik Jagran that he said claimed otherwise.

‘Dalits Can Also Be Brahmanical’

When asked by Bahujan Lives Matter why he had continued to object after learning that some of the passengers were from SC/ST communities, Kumar explained the larger point he wanted his video to make.

He said he had not made the video to create a controversy or to seek money from the passengers. He wanted to communicate to his community that casteist ideas can also be reproduced by people belonging to oppressed communities.

In other words, Kumar's argument was that Dalits can also internalise Brahmanical ideas and reproduce caste hierarchy.

This is an important distinction in anti-caste politics. Caste is not sustained only by the formal identities of those at the top of the hierarchy. Caste ideology can also be internalised by communities subjected to it, producing hierarchies, prejudices and forms of discrimination within oppressed groups themselves.

For Kumar, therefore, the revelation that some passengers were SC/ST did not invalidate his objection to the alleged remark.

‘If You Are From My Community, Why Didn’t You Stop Him?’

Kumar said he directly confronted one of the passengers who claimed to belong to an oppressed caste. “If you are from my society, why did you not stop him?” Kumar recalled asking the passenger.

The question captures what Kumar says was the central contradiction of the incident: a person can belong to a historically oppressed caste while simultaneously failing to challenge or even defending casteist behaviour by another person.

The issue, from Kumar's perspective, is therefore not whether someone possesses an SC/ST identity. It is whether that person challenges or reproduces caste hierarchy.

From an Alleged Casteist Remark to ‘Misuse of the SC/ST Act’

After the video went viral, however, the dominant caste's counter-narrative in sections of social media moved in a usual direction.

Instead of keeping the focus on whether a casteist remark had been made inside the cab, posts began portraying the episode as evidence that the SC/ST Act could be used to threaten innocent people or manufacture caste disputes.

One such social-media post shared in connection with the controversy explicitly framed the issue around the SC/ST Act and argued that the law could be used to create social conflict. The accompanying video presented the railway employees' version of the incident and emphasised that some of them belonged to SC/ST communities.

This reframing is significant because it changes the central question. The original dispute, as Kumar describes it, was: Was a casteist remark made, and was caste used to judge someone's professional ability? The new question became: Can the SC/ST Act be misused by Dalits to target other people?

That shift effectively places the person alleging casteism on trial rather than examining the alleged casteist conduct that prompted the confrontation.

The SC/ST Act Became the Story

The discussion around the SC/ST Act also became detached from the fact that Kumar had not, according to his account, actually filed a case against the passengers.

Kumar specifically told Bahujan Lives Matter that despite several days passing after the incident, he did not file an FIR, initiate a case or even issue a legal notice to the passengers. He argued that this contradicted claims that he had manufactured the incident to extract money or invoke the SC/ST Act against them. Yet the idea of an alleged “SC/ST Act threat” became an important part of the counter-narrative.

That distinction matters. An allegation that a person threatened to invoke a law is not the same thing as the actual invocation of that law. In Kumar's account, the discussion about the SC/ST Act became prominent in the public narrative even though he had not filed a case under it.

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 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 the group use the slur Kumar describes. A second passenger, the Loco Pilot who sat in the front seat, said he told Kumar during the confrontation that he belonged to a Scheduled Tribe. 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 said Kumar stopped the car, singled out the passenger in the back middle seat, and began filming and shouting without their having used 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 by e-rickshaw without arguing further, and have described the video as a deliberately staged confrontation built for social media attention rather than a spontaneous response to discrimination.

Kumar said the group's own account does not dispute that he asked them, on camera, why they had not 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.

Rapido's suspension, then 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, ending at 7:40 pm on 19 July 2126.

Kumar said he went to Rapido's office in Lucknow the same day. Staff 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."

Kumar said 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 unwell 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 does not 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 calls from Bahujan samaj political figures, and a wave of abusive and threatening messages online. A #BoycottRapido trend also circulated online, 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 penalties enhanced 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 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 on other platforms have raised in unrelated disputes. Bahujan Lives Matter is not aware of a specific regulatory requirement mandating platforms hear a driver's side before acting; this is worth verifying against current Motor Vehicle Aggregator Guidelines and any state level gig worker rules before 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 its 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.

Analysis: Bahujan Lives Matter's view

Set the two accounts side by side and one detail stands out. The passengers' interview never actually addresses the most specific, checkable claim Kumar makes on camera: that he asked them directly why none of them stopped their colleague from using the slur, if they were truly from the community they say they belong to, and that they did not deny it in the moment. A denial that avoids the one falsifiable claim is a weaker denial than it looks.

Rapido's own suspension notice accuses Kumar of "abuse" and "double meaning conversation," language closer to the passengers' framing than to an independent finding. The company suspended him for close to a century within 48 hours of the incident and reversed the suspension within roughly a day of his showing up at their office in person. That is hard to square with a considered investigation on either end. It looks less like due process and more like a company reaching for whichever version of events makes the complaint go away fastest, first the passengers', then, once the story went national, Kumar's.

The passengers' rebuttal was released on a channel whose own interview frames the story around the risk of "false allegations" under the SC/ST Act rather than testing their account against Kumar's specific, on-camera claim. That framing does the passengers' argument for them before a single fact is checked.

Kumar's own explanation for posting the video complicates any reading of this as a simple two-sided caste dispute. Speaking to Bahujan Lives Matter about why he shared it, he said: "I made this video so word would go out that people from within a community sometimes speak against that same community. There is casteism even within our own caste. His point was not that every SC/ST person will automatically stand together. It was that caste hierarchy can reproduce itself inside the communities it targets, and that solidarity has to be built rather than assumed.

That is the dynamic Bahujan Lives Matter sees in how this story split into two competing interviews, one carried by an Ambedkarite-sympathetic channel, one by a channel whose own framing sides with the passengers before the facts are settled, each fronted by people who can each accurately say they belong to a Scheduled Caste or Tribe. That an SC/ST-identifying source exists for both versions of events does not make the two versions equally likely to be true, and it does not settle what was actually said inside that cab. On the evidence assembled here, Kumar's account holds up better than the version built to discredit it.