An Indian man was arrested on an attempt-to-murder charge after a video showing him ramming a woman biker went viral on social media.
The incident, which took place in Gurugram, a city near the national capital Delhi, on 13 September, renewed concerns about road safety in the country.
The video showed the man in a white Ciaz car chasing a group of bikers and then hitting one of them, Shivani Chauhan.
The suspect was arrested on Tuesday in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan, the Gurugram police said, identifying him as Kalyan Bainsla.
A camera mounted on Ms Chauhan’s bike recorded the collision and the footage quickly went viral after she shared it online.
Mr Bainsla was slapped with an attempt-to-murder charge, in addition to negligent and rash driving, after police examined CCTV footage from near where the incident occurred.
Mr Bainsla accepted that the collision was his fault but disputed the biker’s account of the incident. His lawyer said Mr Bainsla “got a bit agitated because the bikers were pestering him”.
The bikers repeatedly overtook his car and slowed down in front of him, he claimed, and that he lost control while trying to avoid Ms Chauhan’s motorcycle near a U-turn.
He said he drove away because the riders were abusing him and he feared they would attack him and his relatives.
“Had I stopped right then, those people would have beaten us up,” he told the local news channel Aaj Tak.
Ms Chauhan rejected his account. She alleged the car’s occupants became hostile after she asked the driver to maintain a safe distance.
She suffered minor injuries. Her protective gear apparently prevented more serious harm.
“I could have been gravely hurt or broken my bones,” she said. “I could’ve died on the spot.”
The car the suspect was driving belonged to another person, who distanced himself from the incident.
For women riders in India, the incident heightened concerns about safety. “This isn’t the first time. Nothing has changed in 10 years,” riding coach Divya Sandhu told NDTV, recalling a crash she was involved in a decade ago.
Ms Sandhu said women riders continued to face a different set of attitudes on the road. “It’s very common for people to joke about women’s driving skills,” she said.
“Thankfully, we’d cameras on the bike of the victim and her friend, so we know the truth. Otherwise, everyone would have just blamed the woman. ‘She cannot ride properly’, that’s what we would have heard.”
Another rider, Pallavi Singh, told the outlet “there is no fear of the system” and urged the government “to act”.
Accidents and incidents of road rage are not uncommon in India. According to government data, road crashes killed over 180,000 people in India in 2025, an average of 502 deaths per day and the highest annual toll since the government began collecting the data.
Uttar Pradesh, the country’s largest state, recorded the biggest rise, with road deaths increasing from 24,118 in 2024 to 27,550 in 2025. Punjab, meanwhile, reported a sharp decline, with fatalities falling from 4,759 to 3,062 over the same period.
Overall in 2025, road crashes shot up by 5.3 per cent to over 510,000 and fatalities increased by 3.5 per cent. Eighteen states and federal territories saw a rise in road deaths in 2025, while 17 others reported a decline.
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