US: Uber is being sued by 550 women who claim they were sexually assaulted by drivers employed by the platform, according to a case presented in San Francisco County Superior Court.
Since 2014, Uber has learned that some of its drivers have "sexually harassed and raped female passengers.
Additionally, Uber is accused of profiting financially from rides where women were sexually assaulted.
At least 150 additional cases are currently under investigation.
According to a recent report by a media group called "Uber Files," the company began conducting background checks on the country's "flawed" drivers after a driver sexually assaulted a female passenger in a cab.
Internal emails and excerpts from nearly 124,000 pages of documents published in British daily newspaper The Guardian, members of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, show how a San Francisco-headquartered business employee panicked after an Uber driver was fired.
According to Indian media reports from 2017 a woman was sexually assaulted inside a cab in Delhi on 5 December. Uber reportedly secretly collected the victim's personal medical information. Uber claimed that the woman was creating the incident to defame the company. The woman filed a new defamation lawsuit in the US in December 2017.
The victim's record was then shared by the head of Uber's Asia business with the company's CEO Travis Kalanick, who suggested that the incident may have been a "sabotage attempt" by Uber's rival Ola in India.
