Noida bus owner fined for driver not ‘wearing a helmet’

Mangalore Today News Network

Noida, Sep20, 2019: A bus belonging to a Noida-based transporter was fined by the Gautam Budh Nagar police on September 11 for its driver not wearing a helmet. The owner was slapped with a fine of Rs 500, Hindustan Times reported.

 

The bus is owned by Nirankar Singh, a resident of Sector 12, who runs a transport company that gives buses on hire to schools and various offices in Noida, Greater Noida and Ghaziabad.

“We have more than 80 private buses with NCR permits. A person is employed by us just to check the fines collected by our vehicles and he came across this particular fine. It was issued for one of our buses with an NCR permit. Obviously, we were shocked to find a bus getting a “no-helmet” fine,” Singh said.

He said this was not the first incident of him receiving an inappropriate fine. “Nearly two months ago, one of our buses received three fines the same day. The receipts mentioned only the penalty amount s and the offences were not specified. We have often contacted the traffic police about such wrongful fines, no one ever listens to us. So, we will contest these wrong fines in the court now,” Singh said.

Singh also said a few months ago, one of his buses had received a fine in which the photo capture was that of an auto-rickshaw. “In addition, we had received an online fine of ₹1,000 for one of our insured buses, saying the insurance papers were missing. How can the insurance documents be checked in an online challan?” he said.

Meanwhile, traffic officials said the helmet fine for the bus was issued by an assistant regional transport officer and the discrepancy can be attributed to a “manual error” that happened while issuing the fine on phone.

“The error will be revised but the bus owner already has four pending fines against his vehicles for drivers not wearing seat belt,” Anil Kumar Jha, superintendent of police (traffic), said.