Another shocking news from Uber - Asia Pacific business head, Eric Alexander has been terminated on account of obtaining medical records of India rape victim on the pretext of investigation whether it was a ploy set up by their competitor Ola to sabotage their reputation, as per media reports. 

As reported in Recode, the decision to terminate Eric was taken after two law firms Perkins Coie and Covington & Burling discovered that he has accessed medical records of the woman raped by Uber driver in India. The two law firms are leading the investigation related to sexual harassment claims against Uber. 

Reportedly, Eric Alexander has also shown the medical records to Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and SVP Emil Michael. What was worse – he carried the document and records with him for about a year. The legal department has obtained his copy and destroyed it. 

People Matters reported yesterday that Uber has fired 20 employees over sexual harassment claims. Dismissals were announced at the company-wide meeting held on Tuesday. The identities of the terminated employees are not revealed yet but media reports confirm that amongst 20 are some senior executives of the company as well. 

The investigations were carried out by law firm Perkins Coie after allegations made by former Uber engineer, Susan Fowler. In her blog, she recounted sexual harassment and discrimination on the basis of gender during her tenure with Uber, which started in November 2015. After this incident, Travis Kalanick, CEO, Uber ordered an ‘urgent investigation’ into the organization. 

Uber also facilitated an anonymous hotline for staff, where they could call and report sexual harassment incidents. Also, they can report bullying, discrimination and unprofessional behavior. But, the law firm, Perkins Coie found out during the investigation that no action was taken by the company against 100 reported incidents.

Lately , Uber, the US ride-hailing company has been in a lot of soup with pervasive sexual harassment claims against it. In February this year, Travis Kalanick had also asked Uber’s Senior Vice President of Engineering Division – Amit Singhal to resign as the latter failed to disclose that he left Google because of sexual harassment allegations. Apparently, Google insider found the complaints against Singhal ‘credible’. This is one of the very few instances (or probably the first) where the company has voluntarily asked a Senior Executive to resign for a past allegation in a different company.