A mother and her two daughters, aged 8 and 10, stood up to a cabbie for allegedly running his vehicle with a fudged meter and ran to cops at least 200m away to ensure the man got nabbed after he apparently snatched her money on the Bypass on Thursday morning.

The taxi driver has been identified as Sukumar Dutta, a resident of Ajoynagar. He has been booked under IPC sections of 354A (sexual harassment) and 323 (assault). Both sections are bailable.

The incident occurred near the Ruby rotary around 9am on Holi morning, when there were few cars on the thoroughfare.

Trouble started when the woman pointed out that the taxi meter was fudged while returning from Rabindra Tirtha in Rajarhat, where her elder daughter had a dance performance, to the Ruby hospital area. She also threatened to drag the man to a taxi meter checking unit nearby.

In response, the driver allegedly switched off the ignition and said the gear shaft had got jammed. He also allegedly pushed the woman, who works at a stock brokerage firm on Park Street, out of the taxi and snatched some currency notes from her before speeding off.

Police said the woman's elder daughter gave the cops the registration number of the taxi and the driver had been arrested.

"The woman alleged that the driver asked her and her two daughters to vacate the taxi citing problems in the gear. When she refused to get down, he allegedly pushed her out. Acting on her complaint, we have started a case of assault and sexual harassment. The driver has been arrested," said an officer at Kasba police station.

The woman said she had hired a radio cab from her home near Ruby hospital to Rabindra Tirtha and noted that the distance was 14km. But on her way back, in a yellow taxi, she saw the meter showed 20km while they were near Fortis Hospital, about 400m ahead of the Ruby rotary.

"I told the taxi driver that I would not pay more than the fare for 14km and if he had a problem with that, I would take him to the meter checking facility near Siemens on the Rashbehari Avenue connector," the woman recounted.

At this point, the driver allegedly switched off the ignition and started fiddling with the gear shaft. "I told him that I had been driving for 12 years and he could not fool me. I asked him to keep the engine running and take me to the Ruby rotary in whatever gear the shaft had got stuck," she said.

But the driver allegedly pushed her out and when she was calculating on her mobile phone how much to pay him, he allegedly snatched some currency notes.

The woman's elder daughter, however, spotted the man pushing a Rs 500 note under his seat with his feet and picked up the note.

"As soon as we recovered the money, he probably thought we would find the other notes, too. The front door was open and I was holding on to it. But he turned on the ignition and sped off. I was lucky not to be hurt," the woman said.

The woman said she could not note down the registration number of the taxi in the commotion but her elder daughter took it down. "We half-ran-half-walked to the Ruby intersection (a distance of about 200m from where the cab was stopped) where there were many cops. I told the cops the registration number of the taxi that my elder daughter had noted down," the woman recalled.

My daughter also told the cops that the driver had headed off from the Ruby intersection towards Kalikapur.

The woman said the cab had been intercepted and brought to the Ruby crossing within 10 minutes. The driver initially denied the accusations and allegedly pleaded with the woman to withdraw the complaint.

"I told him my daughters were dying to play Holi but I couldn't let him get away with what he did," the woman said.