Assam police on Monday (29 April) arrested Congress party’s “war room coordinator” Reetam Singh in connection with a fake video of Union Home Minister Amit Shah. He had posted a doctored video to claim that Amit Shah has promised to end reservations for SC, ST and OBCs. In this context, it is important to note that his father was earlier caught spreading fake news.
In 2022, Reetam Singh’s father had claimed that an Ola scooter Reetam was riding accelerated after applying its brakes, causing an accident in which his son was injured badly. However, the company had busted his lies by publishing the data from the electric scooter, which showed that the accident was caused because Reetam was over-speeding, and the brakes worked normally.
On 15 April 2022, Reetam’s father Balwant Singh posted a series of tweets blaming ‘fault in regenerative braking’ for the accident with his son on 26 March in Guwahati. The father claimed that when his son applied the brakes on the newly purchased Ola S1 Pro scooter, it accelerated instead of stopping, and generated so much torque that the two-wheeler crashed.
He claimed that the scooter went airborne after the brakes were applied, and then it went crashing and skidding. Reetam was severely injured in the accident, with fracture in left hand and needing many stitches on the right hand. He was flown from Guwahati to Mumbai for surgery, “to save his left hand from life long disability”. The father had also posted photographs of Reetam in hospital.
Balwant Singh said that Ola Electric took away the scooter on 11 April and an executive called to understand the issue, but there was no information from the company after that.
After Singh posted the tweets on 15 April, Ola responded to him on the same day saying that they were working on the issue. Then on 21 April, the company informed that the scooter has been returned and there was no issue with the scooter as alleged, and advised him to ride safely.
Incidentally, on the same say, union transport minister Nitin Gadkari said that the govt has constituted an expert committee to look into the issue of several mishaps involving electric two-wheelers during that time.
Gadkari tweeted that “if any company is found negligent in their processes, a heavy penalty will be imposed and a recall of all defective vehicles will also be ordered.” In the meanwhile, Balwant Singh posted some more tweets addressing Ola over his son’s accident.
As the issue stared to gain momentum on social media, in a surprise move, Ola Electric on 22 April 2022 published the telemetry data of the scooter, showing that Reetam was riding the scooter at very high speed leading to the accident. As per the data, he rode the scooter in hyper mode at 114 km per hour in two sections just before midnight, and then when he was riding again in hyper mode and had reached 95 kmph, he applied the brakes suddenly.
The company’s data shows that he applied all three brakes, front brake, rear brake and the regenerative brake, which is reversing the throttle. Regenerative braking is a feature in electric vehicles which generates power by running the motor in reverse using the kinetic energy of the wheels.
The company asserted that the brakes of the scooter worked fine, decelerating from 80 kmph to 0 kmph in just 3 seconds. The data also showed that there was no sudden torque or acceleration after applying the brakes, as claimed by Balwant Singh. The sensors of the vehicle showed that it fell on its right side.
After the Ola published the report, Balwant Singh claimed that it is wrong, and the third spite in the speed was after Reetam had applied the brakes. He claimed that when the scooter crashed, it was in normal speed.
Before Ola published the report, netizens were attacking the company, because several incidents of electric scooters of the company were being reported at that time. However, after the report was published, it was proven that this accident was the result of over-speeding, not because of any fault with the vehicle.
Therefore, Reetam Singh’s father decided to change tactic to attack the company, and claimed that the company violated privacy laws by publishing the report with his consent. He sent the company a legal notice asking it to take down the telemetry data report.
However, Ola Electric hit back instead of complying, asking Singh to remove all social media posts attacking the company. The company asked him to take down “all negative and defamatory statements, posts, tweets, re-tweets, reposts, articles and reports” made against Ola Electric, saying that appropriate action will be taken if the allegations are not removed.
There seems to be a stalemate after that, with neither parties carrying out their threats. The Ola telemetry data report remains on the company’s Twitter (now X) handle. Similarly, Balwant Singh’s posts are also available, and he has continued to amplify various allegations made by others against Ola scooters.