Minors murder Uber cabbie, dump his body

A 51-year-old Uber cab driver, identified as Kuldeep Thakur, was allegedly murdered by two passengers, both minors, who dumped his body at an open field in west Delhi’s Mundka area, the Delhi police said on Friday.

The police has detained both minors. One of them on questioning claimed that his father worked as a security guard for the grandson of the Nizam of Hyderabad for 20-25 days every month.

The murder took place on Wednesday evening around 4 pm. The two juveniles had booked the cab from southwest Delhi’s Najafgarh area and were going to Hiran Kudna in West Delhi to a friend’s place.

During a conversation with the driver while travelling, the two juveniles asked Thakur where he was from, to which he replied that he was from Mandi in Himachal Pradesh. The juveniles then allegedly started making fun of the driver and his hometown. “Jokingly, as a rejoinder when Thakur also made fun of the juveniles’ native place, that is in Mundka, both of them got angry and whipped out their pistols and pumped a bullet each in the driver’s head,” said a senior police officer.

After killing him, the two juveniles dumped his body near a paddy field in Mundka and drove off with the Swift Dzire and abandoned it near a Coca-Cola factory in Najafgarh. It was only when a passerby saw the abandoned cab without number plates on Thursday morning round 10 am that he made a PCR call. The police found one of the number plates beneath the seat of the cab, said an investigating officer.

Through the help of the number plate, the police got in touch with both Ola and Uber and got to know the details of the driver. “While Ola helped in identifying the victim, Uber helped in tracking down the juveniles who had hired the cab,” the police said.

They confessed that they had thrown away the body of Thakur, the victim, in an agricultural field since the road was deserted.

“Kuldeep Thakur had been booked through the Uber app for the first time when the incident took place on Wednesday. He was driving for Ola Cabs until March 11,” said joint commissioner of police (south-western range) Depender Pathak.

Thakur lived with his family at Khanpur in South Delhi, added the police.