Cover Image for Woman in Gurgaon alarmed by shocking text message from Uber driver: "I want to kidnap you"
Tue Dec 17 2024

Woman in Gurgaon alarmed by shocking text message from Uber driver: "I want to kidnap you"

The online community has started to doubt the effectiveness of autocorrect.

Recently, a resident of Gurugram shared her terrifying experience after requesting an Uber ride, which led her to return home for safety reasons. On the platform Reddit, the user known as kushpyro1 recounted that after requesting a vehicle to the train station, she received a chilling message from the driver that said, "I will gladly kidnap you."

The user described in her post that she was trembling while writing, with a train scheduled in an hour, expressing her concern about whether she would make it on time. The woman had booked a Sedan Priority to Anand Vihar Terminal and sent a message to the driver before stepping away to grab her luggage. When she checked the Uber chat for the OTP, she came across the driver's alarming message.

In her account, she indicated that the assigned driver was Chandan, who was driving a Maruti Suzuki Dzire. After receiving the disturbing message, she felt a wave of panic as she realized that the driver was only seconds away from her. “I don’t know what impulse made me do it—it was 4 a.m., I had barely slept, and I felt panic after reading a text from a guy who was literally just seconds away—I decided to cancel the trip. As soon as I began to do it, he canceled first, and I ran back home with my luggage. I managed to take a screenshot just before it was canceled,” the user explained.

The post has garnered 1.4k upvotes and 163 comments. In response, many suggested that the chilling message could have been a translation error. However, the woman made it clear that she reviewed more than eight inquiries about the meaning of the word in different native languages and that no term translated “kidnap” except the word “apaharan.”