Car owner assaulted, abused by Cops for not paying fine in cash and asking for receipt (Video)

I’m writing this post to put light on the rampant corruption and harassment by traffic police due to public’s lack of awareness of traffic laws and regulations. In the wake of making roads more safe for public, most of the traffic policemen use these laws to harass and extort money from public.

This incidence happened on 29th January, i.e. yesterday at Aurangabad which was on the way to my journey from Bhilai, Chhattisgarh to Mumbai by my car (CG 07 M 6657). At an unknown traffic signal one of the three policeman (V B Salve) called me aside and asked me to come out with licence, registration and other documents, after checking the documents I was asked to pay ?700/- as fine in spite everything was proper.

Which I was falsely accused of ‘driving without wearing seatbelt’, I protested and asked for resolution of the issue to which Mr. V B Salve along with Mr. K K Hiwale said “redressal will happen in court on 7th Feb and till then your Vehicle RC and Licence will be seized, only to be released after court’s order”. To avoid the legal hassle I agreed to pay the amount as I had to reach Mumbai by evening.

But I refused to pay directly to them and demanded a legitimate payment receipt which infuriated them. Now they started threatening me to seize my car too, when their harassment crossed the threshold, I started recording the matter through my phone. Afraid of getting exposed they threw my phone, not allowing me to record and assaulted me to retrieve the phone to delete the already recorded video, they tore my t-shirt and the challan copy.

I managed to escape due to the public gathering and was told to take the challan and go to their concerned office to pay the fine in order to take back my seized documents. It took me 2:30 hours to find that office with unknown location in a totally unknown city, when I explained the whole incidence to their superior with video evidence, he started accusing me to ‘tear up the challan(govt. document) on purpose, refusing to pay the fine’ and threatened to initiate legal action against me until I pleaded my innocence and finally paid the fine after an hour of intense drama and with stern warning of not escalating the issue further.

Finally the whole incidence ended up extending my journey for more than 4 hours and a fine of ?200/-.

Yes, ?200/- was the actual fine that too I had to pay for a false accusation, I guess driving an outside Maharashtra vehicle made them consider me as a soft target.

Prime reason for this post is to start a discussion on the issue of police harassment and corruption at the grassroot level, Being highly educated and aware citizen if such thing can happen to me, I can only imagine worse being faced my less fortunate fellow citizens of India and worst of worst being that, it all goes unreported.