The driver of the motorcycle on which university student Fahmida Haque Labanya was pillion riding before her death had supplied false information when registering with Uber, the police said.
Labanya died after a covered van crashed into the motorcycle she had hailed using the ride sharing app in the capital's College Gate area.
"The motorcyclist Sumon Hossain used a fake address to register with Uber. The address on his National ID and Bkash account are fake too," Biplop Kumar Sarkar, deputy commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police's Tejgaon division, told a media briefing.
Labanya, a third year student of the Computer Science and Engineering Department of BRAC University, was travelling to her university from her Shyamoli home using the Uber Moto service. The accident occurred in front of the National Heart Institute in Sher-e-Bangla Nagar when a covered van rammed the motorcycle from behind.
According to bdnews24.com, Labonya was thrown off the motorcycle from the impact before being run over by the covered van.
She was rushed to the Shahid Suhrwardy Medical College Hospital where doctors on duty declared her dead.
According to the police, the covered van driver is mainly at fault for the incident,
Deputy Commissioner Biplab said. But at the same time, the Uber rider was also culpable.
"The Uber registered rider was driving recklessly. The driver behind (the covered van driver) was similarly reckless."
"The vehicles collided when the covered van tried to overtake the motorcycle at a high speed. Labanya was flung from the bike as a result before being trampled by the van."
Police arrested the covered van driver Anisur Rahman on Saturday. The motorcyclist Sumon was also held in police custody prior to that but had not been arrested, the deputy commissioner added.
The address which Sumon provided to the Suhrwardy Hospital authorities after the accident was also false, he told the media briefing. Police did not receive any assistance from Uber regarding the matter despite contacting the company on several occassions.
Deputy Commissioner Biplab said that the company's authorities cannot evade liability for registering Sumon as a rider without verifying his address, adding, "Legal action will be taken against those found to be at fault after the investigation."
Md Ali Armanur Rahma, senior manager of Uber in Bangladesh, attended the briefing. But he did not answer questions relating to the company's failure to cooperate with police.
"The accident is painful. We must work to avoid these kinds of incidents," he said without adding anything further.
