A magistrate court in Jammu and Kashmir’s capital Srinagar recently ordered a traffic policeman to pay Rs 1,000 as compensation for erroneously issuing an e-challan against the wrong vehicle. The court held that the challan had been wrongfully issued due to the inadvertence and carelessness of the officer.
The owner of the vehicle approached the court of Special Mobile Magistrate (Traffic), Srinagar, by filing an application seeking dismissal of the challan.
The vehicle owner submitted that the challan was to be sent to another scooty, but the traffic official issued a challan against his vehicle for being without a helmet under the provision of Section 177 of the MV Act and imposed a fine of Rs 1,000.
He argued that due to the mistake committed by the officials of the traffic department, he had to suffer a loss and had to spend his precious time and money on the mistake which was committed by the department.
The concerned officer also appeared and accepted that he had inadvertently challaned the wrong vehicle.
Special Mobile Magistrate (Traffic) Mudasar Farooq noted that the applicant was not present on the spot on the day of the occurrence. Therefore, he held the challan defective and dismissed it.
Along with ordering compensation for the applicant, the court ordered the defective challan to be taken down and directed the SSP Traffic of Srinagar City to institute an e-challan against the actual violator.
Moreover, while noting that it appeared that either the traffic cops manning the system were not fully trained to operate the e- challaning mechanism or they were not taking due care and caution at the time of initiation of e-challan, the court directed the SSP to sensitise the traffic officials dealing with e-challaning system, “…so that the innocent persons will not be forced to face difficulties in future”.
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