Hyderabad, October 12: “AK Khan, first put your house in order before pointing your finger at motorists violating traffic rules,” said Rajender Khanna, a victim of traffic police, to a bewildered police commissioner and other police officials. He also informed there cannot be different rules for different people.
Rajender Khanna, a member of the Guardian’s Human Civil Rights Forum not only complained about the situation to the top cop but gave complete photography evidence. He said it has been the police, especially traffic police who have been blatantly violating all traffic rules. Therefore, erring police officials should also pay the penalty besides initiating other action. For instance, on September 24 it was found that Nampally inspector’s vehicle was parked for a long time exactly in centre of the road.
“It happened exactly opposite to the Nampally traffic police station and it was an interesting sight. On the middle of the road, the traffic inspector’s vehicle was parked and some distance away, motorists were being penalised for various traffic violations,” Rajender Khanna told Expresso. Meanwhile, his camera is on a shutter-happy spree capturing this dichotomy since he felt policemen were not above the law.
All this has come to light in wake of the special drive against motorists for traffic violations. For the last few months, additional commissioner of police (Traffic) CV Anand has been pressing all motorists to make sure their number plates comply with rules of the Motor Vehicle Act. Hundreds of persons have been penalised between Rs 2,000 and Rs 5,000 for using either number plates with fancy texts or for not having number plates. But many traffic police vehicles were found to be in a similar condition with fancy number plates and not displaying the number properly, thus being eligible for fines.
When the complainant first went to a senior traffic police, reportedly of the rank of assistant commissioner of police, the latter declined to take the complaint by telling that police can park anywhere as they come under emergency services. “But I took strong objection and lodged the same complaint with both AK Khan and CV Anand by showing them complete proofs. Both gave me oral assurances that action will taken. But I don’t think they have initiated any action,’’ Khanna said. He demanded that senior officials should take action, if possible under CrPC against all policemen found violating traffic rules.
“Honestly, I should tell that several of our officials think they are above law and commit offences like wrong side driving, triple riding and not maintaining proper number plates. We have also been getting complainants from people that several government vehicles including police vehicles do not have proper number plates. Therefore, we are going to take up a drive against government vehicles including police vehicles and penalise the driver,” Anand said.
–Agencies