THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Even as the fracas created by E Bull Jet YouTubers Ebin and Libin Varghese in Kannur has caught the attention of public, a speedster in the capital had been dodging law enforcement authorities though he had run up `53,600 in fines for flouting traffic rules since 2013. The slow-moving arm of the law finally caught up with Poonthura native M Siddique only because of an enraged motorist whose car was scraped by the former’s car at Palayam on Saturday did a background check and posted the photograph of the car with a ‘Press’ sticker and described the incident on Facebook, which went viral.
When Rajeev Chandrasekharan Nair checked with the motor vehicles department website, he found that the Innova car with registration number KL01 AV 4777 that hit his vehicle while overtaking from the left was blacklisted by the department for frequent violation of traffic rules. After his Facebook post drew widespread criticism, the MVD and city police finally caught hold of Siddique who readily paid up `53,600 in fines. Explaining the delay in taking action against Siddique, Thiruvananthapuram RTO (enforcement) G Sajan said the department has a system for imposing penalties for speed violations. “We send the challans to the violators.
If an errant motorist does not pay the fines multiple times, we blacklist the vehicle. Usually, the offenders have to pay the fines when they come to the RTO office for selling the vehicle or for any other purpose,” he said. “In this case, the car was already blacklisted for many speeding violations. When this issue became a rage on Facebook, we tracked down the vehicle owner with the help of the police and and imposed a penalty. We will have a special control room in Thiruvananthapuram to monitor the speeding violations soon and MVD is also planning to start prosecution procee ings so as to ensure that offenders pay the fines at the earliest,” he said.
City Police Commissioner Balram Kumar Upadhyay directed the police to take immediate action following the media reports. With the intervention of the police, the vehicle’s owner agreed to pay up the fine arrears. The vehicle owner had been fined `36,500 by MVD for 28 speeding offences since 2013 and the police had fined him `17,100 for 40 speeding incidents from 2014. Since Rajeev did not register a complaint, the city police did not register any case. According to police, they could not send challans to all offenders as the number of violations is huge. However, the system of imposing fines is being streamlined so that all violators pay the fines in a timely manner.
CHARGED 63 TIMES FOR RASH DRIVING Siddique had been charged 68 times for rash driving since 2013. Interestingly, the details of the vehicle disappeared from MVD’s Parivahan mobile application soon after Rajeev’s Facebook post went viral