Swiggy reacts to 'don't want Muslim delivery boy' row

After the Swiggy customer's message mentioning that his order should not be delivered by a Muslim delivery boy triggered controversy, the food aggregator responded stating that they are attempting to validate the authenticity of the screenshot.

The incident came to light when Shaikh Salauddin, National General Secretary of the Indian Federation Of App Based Transport Workers (IFAT) shared the screengrab of the instruction mentioned by the Hyderabad-based customer and requested Swiggy to take a stand against such a request.

Calling itself 'an equal opportunity platform', Swiggy's support handle on Twitter said such requests are not considered as the assignment of delivery workers is fully automated.

The response came after Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra tweeted about the discriminatory demand and asked Swiggy to blacklist the customer, make their name public and file a police complaint over the incident. Swiggy added that the company has been trying to validate the authenticity and recency of the screenshot to get more information since the incident was first reported.

The screenshot of the prejudiced instruction went viral on social media and triggered outrage, with demands that Swiggy should blacklist bigoted customers.

Twitter seemed to be enraged by such blizzard demands and suggested that such customers shouldn't be appreciated and should be banned. Karti Chidambaram, Congress MP from Karnataka, also expressed anger and wrote, "Platform companies cannot sit back and watch as gig workers face such blatant bigotry in the name of religion. What action will such companies take to safeguard the rights of gig workers?"