Last week, Hemanth Kumar, a private firm employee and resident of Jayanagar, was pulled up by the traffic police near the metro station in his neighbourhood for not wearing a helmet while riding his motorcycle. When the police ran a check on his licence and registration number for previous violations, they found that he had around nine violations with fines totalling ₹2,200. All the violations had been recorded on enforcement cameras.
As he was late for work, Mr. Kumar paid the fines, collected the receipt and rode off. However, later in the week when he was free, he decided to check the dates of the violations. “I was shocked to find that I was nowhere in the area where the violations had been recorded. I had neither visited any of the places nor loaned my bike to a friend or a family member,” he said.
Suspecting that something was amiss, he decided to follow up with the traffic police and paid a visit to the Traffic Management Centre (TMC) on Infantry Road. While waiting for help, he started talking to other people and found that there was a long queue of people with similar complaints. “My experience was not an isolated incident. They were all waiting for their turn to meet the officials concerned,” he said.
Motorists being pulled up for traffic violations they claim they did not commit are increasingly becoming more common. Senior traffic police officials at the TMC acknowledged the problem. “We received as many as 150 such complaints in the last one month alone,” said a police officer, adding that it is a matter of serious concern. “Fake registration number plates are not only posing a challenge to the traffic police but are also being used to commit anti-social activities,” the officer said.
Jeevan K., who hails from Andhra Pradesh but lives in Bengaluru, also claimed to have received multiple notices for violations he did not commit. “I was working in my home town in Andhra Pradesh and only recently returned to Bengaluru. How could I have committed them? My bike was also with me at the time the violation occurred in Bengaluru,” he said.
At the TMC, staff were busy going through video footage records for the disputed cases. Police personnel on duty admitted that many complaints were genuine. Most of the cases are related to two-wheelers. For instance, in one case, the cameras showed a white scooter using the registration number of a motorcycle. “It appears that vehicle registration numbers have been used by some other bike owners who are then blatantly violating the traffic rules,” said a police officer. The enforcement cameras record the violations, the challan is generated at the TMC and sent to the vehicle owner.
Joint Commissioner of Police B.R. Ravikanthe Gowda said action would be taken and FIRs registered when motorists are caught using another vehicle’s registration number. “We are flagging such vehicles and alerts have been sent to traffic police personnel at junctions to seize them. The traffic police have also been instructed to register FIRs at the jurisdictional police stations,” he said.
After the TMC verifies complaints of fake number plates and wrong challans, the fine amount is cancelled. However, the onus is on vehicle owners to visit the TMC with the challan.
