Grab said its facial recognition tech helped with the arrest of Sabah driver’s murder suspect

“On behalf of the Grab family, we offer our deepest condolences to the family of our Grab driver-partner, Mohammad Hanafiee Bin Jaafar, during this time of loss. He was a hardworking individual and one of our top performing driver-partners. We are deeply saddened that the incident occurred while he was working hard to earn a living,” Grab wrote in a statement issued today.

Grab has been under fire on social media after Hanafiee’s death in Kota Kinabalu recently. The 27-year old driver was murdered by the passengers that he was driving.

The incident has shocked the Grab drivers community around the country, and particularly in Sabah, where drivers are now circulating a list of 19 “black areas” around the state capital which they feel are dangerous for Grab drivers and riders, especially during night time.

Grab said it provided all the necessary information to the PDRM to assist in the murder investigation. This included a photo of the suspects and the necessary information obtained from its passenger selfie verification feature that’s built into the Grab app.

Grab added that the technology has “contributed significantly to PDRM’s investigation that led to the arrest of two suspects in this case”.

To date, Grab has enabled a number of safety-oriented tools including the emergency button and ‘share my ride’ feature where both parties are able to share trip details and live GPS locations with friends and/or loved ones.

In April this year, Grab launched the passenger selfie verification feature where passengers are required to submit a selfie of themselves via the app as a form of image identification. The company claims the features have managed to reduce passenger-initiated crimes on its platform by 30%.

Grab also reminded the public to refrain from sharing Hanafiee’s personal information on social media out of respect for the deceased and his family.

On behalf of both PDRM and Grab, we request that everyone refrain from sharing the victim’s personal information on social media. We would like to respect the privacy of the family during this difficult time.

Grab will offer the necessary support to Hanafiee’s to assist them in this difficult time.

[image credit: Malay Mail]