TAXI FOCUS


Police Lt. Col. Teerayut Maiplaeng said Pilkington, 51, had been living in Thailand for at least three years and spoke Thai fluently, the NY Daily News reported. The driver claims that Californian-born Mr Pilkington lunged at him and he was forced to stab him with the machete in self-defence. Video footage from a surveillance camera captured part of his ordeal, which took place last month on Bangkok’s busy Sukhumvit Road. The footage shows the taxi driver swinging a machete as a man, identified as Mr Pilkington, flails his arms and tries to grab the driver. The two men then move out of the camera’s view, and seconds later, the sword-wielding driver reappears in the frame as he flees the scene. Mr Pilkington worked for US machinery company Caterpillar Inc. and had lived in Thailand for at least three years. The taxi driver told investigators that Pilkington accused him of rigging the taxi’s meter and then stormed out of the cab while they sat in traffic. He claimed the American threw a cup of coffee at him when he asked for the money, after which he pulled the knife from his trunk and chased after Pilkington. Police identified the driver from the video footage and later arrested him at his house. Chidchai is facing charges of murder and carrying a weapon in public without reasonable cause.


from Pakistan


STOP OR NOT! I’M SHOOTING: TAXI DRIVER SLAIN IN FRONT OF SON


A trigger-happy member of


the paramilitary


Rangers shot dead a taxi driver who was taking his four-year-old child to buy fruit for Iftar in the city’s Gulistan-e-Jauhar neigh- bourhood last month. According


to


“The victim was dead when he was brought to the hospital,” said the medico-legal officer at Jinnah hospital. The law enforcers also vouched for Murad as a law-abiding citizen who had no criminal record, as later corroborated by DIG Tahir Naveed, police chief for District East. The head of the paramilitary unit, Major General Rizwan Akhtar, later sus- pended four Rangers personnel for their role in the incident. On June 4, a Rangers solider gunned down a 22-year-old motorist Ghu- lam Haider in Shah Faisal Colony for allegedly failing to stop his car. The youth was driving his cousin to the hospital for a dialysis.


from China


I HAD THAT CHINESE PREMIER IN THE BACK OF MY CAB - STORY IS A HOAX


the


Express Tribune, an eyewitness said he saw Rangers men on motor- cycles signalling at the taxi to stop. “The driver stopped and started reversing towards the Rangers who opened fire at him,” he said. Ghulam Rasul, the Rangers soldier responsible for the incident, said he suspected the driver was a bandit who had kidnapped a child. But police officials ruled out such a possibility.


“The driver stopped and started reversing towards the Rangers who opened fire at him,”


The driver, identified as Murad, a resident of Chishti Nagar, Block 10 in Gulistan-e-Jauhar, was shot four times in the chest. Murad’s son was unharmed but he was unable to speak after witnessing the whole shock- ing episode. Murad’s body was taken to Jinnah hospital for an autopsy and was then handed over to the family.


It was a yarn to make taxi drivers the world-over salivate - a passenger in the back of the cab who turned out to be one of the most powerful men on the planet. According to the Telegraph, reports that China’s president, Xi Jinping, had taken an undercover spin with a Beijing cabbie were revealed to be an elaborate hoax, just hours after the country’s official news agency had confirmed the story. The “exclusive” report in Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing Ta Kung Pao newspa- per set the Chinese internet alight with claims that Mr Xi had used a secretive 26-minute taxi ride to take the pulse of his nation. Word of Mr Xi’s unusual excursion spread quickly around the globe: Bloomberg, the New York Times, The Daily Telegraph, Reuters and Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post all picked up on the story. China’s propaganda-packed state media pounced on the report with par- ticular gusto, spinning Mr Xi’s cab journey as the latest example of the president’s common touch. But if the story had seemed too good to be true, it was. in the afternoon, the Chinese news agency Xinhua was forced into an embarrassing climb- down. Having earlier confirmed the story, citing Beijing transport authorities, Xinhua claimed Xi’s taxi ride was, in fact, a “fabrication.” Mean- while, Ta Kung Pao issued a grovelling apology. “It is extremely wrong to have published such significant fake news,” it said in a statement. Mr Xi’s bogus taxi ride had initially appeared to be the latest phase in the president’s quest for Chinese hearts and minds. The subsequently discredited Ta Kung Pao article claimed that at around 7pm on March 1, China’s commander-in-chief had embarked on a 5.1-mile cab ride through the capital with a 46-year-old driver named as Guo Lixin. For several minutes the pair discussed Beijing’s pollution problems before Mr Xi’s cover was blown. “Has anyone ever said that you look like General Secretary Xi?” Mr Xi reportedly confessed, with a “chuckle”. “You are the first driver to ever recognize me in a taxi,” he said. The driver then offered a glowing appraisal of Mr Xi’s nascent leadership, the report claimed. “You are so close to the people,” he gushed. “It is a blessing that you have come to our side.” “Everyone is equal,” Mr Xi told the driver, who was handed 30 yuan (£3.18) to cover the fare and told to keep the change of around 32p. “You must take it,” Mr Xi insisted. Alas, it turned out there was nothing to be learned from Mr Xi at all. As reported in the Chinese press, what sort of senior official would take a taxi? Not even a mayor!


AS MANY AS HALF OF ALL TAXI & PRIVATE HIRE DRIVERS HAVE BEEN MIS-SOLD PPI


START YOUR CLAIM TODAY... YOU COULD BE OWED £££S 0800 456 1119


AUGUST 2013 PHTM PAGE 61


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