KOTA KINABALU, May 29 — E-hailing service Grab provided details of the suspect including a photo from the app that helped the police in the murder case of its local driver here recently.

In a statement today, Grab Malaysia said that it reached out to the police as soon as the matter was reported and provided all the necessary information to aid the investigation.

"This included a photo of the suspect and the necessary information from our passenger selfie verification feature built into the Grab app. This technology has contributed significantly to PDRM’s investigation that led to the arrest of two suspects in this case,” it said.

The e-hailing company, which had bought over another ride-sharing rival, Uber, said its priority was to protect the safety of its community of drivers and users alike.

"Currently we have in place a variety of tools such as the emergency button and the ‘share my ride’ feature where both parties are able to share trip details and live GPS locations with friends and/or loved ones, and the recently launched passenger selfie verification.

"With the initial roll out of the passenger selfie verification, passenger-initiated crimes on our platform have declined by 30 per cent as a result of it being launched as a requirement for all new users. We expect this to improve further as we introduce this requirement to even more users on our platform,” it said.

Grab said it will continue to work with the authorities like the police to reduce the incident rate on its platform and within the community, by sharing relevant information with the authorities and helping to expedite investigations where they can.

"While we strive for zero incidents across the millions of rides that we enable on a monthly basis, some incidents do occur and are unfortunately caused by individuals with harmful or malicious intent.

"However, we remain steadfast in our commitment to minimizing the risk of safety incidents for both our drivers and passengers alike,” it said.

Grab driver Mohd Hanafiee Jaffar was reported missing on Saturday. A body that was found in Tuaran is currently in the process of being formally identified. — Picture via Facebook/Yinyin Ayin

Grab has been facing some heat since the incident last Saturday when Grab driver Mohd Hanafiee Jaafar was allegedly robbed and murdered after picking up two men at 4am here.

The suspects abandoned the blood-stained car at a parking lot in Indah Permai, Sepanggar, while they dumped the body in another area.

A corpse found in Shahbandar, Tuaran has yet to be confirmed to be that of Hanafiee pending fingerprint identification, but police believe it likely.

Since then, drivers and users have been calling for increased safety features to protect the former.

Grab said that Hanafiee was a hardworking individual and one of their top performing driver-partners.

"We are deeply saddened that the incident occurred while he was working hard to earn a living.

"Our team will be reaching out to Hanafiee’s family and make arrangements to provide the necessary support,” it said.