'I want to kidnap you': Gurgaon resident shares Uber driver's frightening text, internet has a theory

A resident of Gurgaon shared a message they received from a Uber driver in the middle of the night that scared them into running back home. Reddit user kushpyro1 shared their terrifying experience on r/gurgaon, posting the shocking message a cab driver sent.

"I am shivering while I am actually writing this right now. I have a train in 1 hour and God knows if I will reach there on time," the user said explaining that they booked a Priority Sedan cab from Uber to go to a train station.

"When he was about to arrive, I thought to myself to check the OTP once and flashed open my Uber Chat where driver sent me a bizarre message," they said.

A screenshot shared along with the post showed the brief conversation between the rider and the cab driver. "I am here. Anand Vihar Terminal drop. Please come," the rider wrote. In response, the driver wrote, "Go to Anand Vihar. I want to go to kidnap you happily,"

Take a look at the post here:

The absurd message frightened the user who was terrified to read the text in the middle of the night. "I don’t know what impulse kicked into me (4am, barely any sleep and panic after reading text from a guy who is literally few seconds in front of me) but I thought to cancel the cab, when I began to cancel he immediately cancelled himself and I ran back into the house with my luggage. I happened to take a SS just a moment before it was cancelled," they wrote.

While the story shocked many, some users quickly pointed out that the message may not be as sinister as it seems. "It looks like auto correct gone wrong. But good thing you took another cab. This was freaky," wrote on user, while another added, "Feels like translation mishap or autocorrect. Coz the sentence does not seem to make any sense at all."

The rider, however, said that they tried all "8+ native language queries to English and nothing translates to “kidnap” except the word “apaharan”.

What did Uber say?

The user said they raised the issue with Uber Response Team who informed them that the driver will be indefinitely banned from accepting or seeing their ride requests. "We will contact the driver to understand the issue from their perspective. Disciplinary actions may include: Sensitising the driver about the impact of their actions/words. Termination of their Uber account," the user said in a follow-up post.