Acting on complaints from passengers about autorickshaw drivers overcharging and refusing to ferry them, the city traffic police on Monday posed as commuters to nab the errant drivers.
In a drive undertaken by a team of 50 policemen, led by Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) C.V. Anand, spread out to different parts of the city and hired autos from hospitals and railway and bus stations. “Decoy teams asked drivers to travel short distances. Some refused to travel, while others charged extra fare,” said DCP (Traffic-I) G.V.G Ashok Kumar.
Cases booked
He said the errant drivers were caught immediately and cases were booked against them under Motor Vehicle Act. As many as 1,400 cases were registered against drivers and penalties were also collected from them. The crackdown exercise will continue till Saturday.
Action was also initiated against some drivers for carrying extra passengers, or making passengers sit next to the drivers and rash driving, bus-bay and wrong parking, signal jumping, wrong side driving, driving without uniform, licence and registration documents.
Traffic police also checked pending challans with the help of programmable device application.
Meanwhile, the Telangana Auto Drivers Joint Action Committee staged a protest demanding the traffic police to immediately stop the drive launched against them.
