The Hyderabad traffic police are requesting the judiciary to award jail terms to drivers in drunken driving cases.
Stating this at a press conference here on Tuesday, the Traffic Police Additional Commissioner C.V. Anand said that they were convincing magistrates to sentence persons caught while driving under the influence of alcohol. This was part of the efforts to rein in tipsy drivers and minimise road accidents.
A special drive against drunken driving was taken up by the city traffic police for over a year. Under Section 185 of Motor Vehicle Act, which is invoked in drunken driving cases, a person can be imposed with a fine or jail term or both. In majority cases, normally fine is imposed.
With the introduction of breath analysers, the traffic police could precisely tell the blood alcohol content percentage of a vehicle driver after subjecting the driver to test. “If the blood alcohol content is 150 mg per 100 ml of blood or more, we would request the magistrate to sentence him to jail term,” he said.
For this, the traffic police are citing such cases from Delhi and Mumbai cities as examples. To check woman drivers, the police are also planning to constitute “women teams” .
In the past one year, police have caught 10,277 persons in drunken driving cases.
