In a bizarre incident, a journalist in Uttar Pradesh was fined for not wearing a helmet while driving his car and is now battling to revoke the case.
Over nine months ago, Tushar Saxena, a television journalist from Rampur, received an unexpected challan for a ₹1,000 fine from the Noida Police in Gautam Buddh Nagar district. The reason? Allegedly not wearing a helmet while driving his four-wheeler, as reported by NDTV. The incident occurred 188 km away from Rampur, in Noida.
Initially, Saxena dismissed the fine as a mistake, thinking it was a mix-up. However, he soon received a follow-up email and message, urging him to pay the fine.
“I have never driven my car to the NCR area. And if there’s a rule that mandates wearing a helmet inside a car, I would like the authorities to provide this in writing,” Saxena told NDTV.
The police have warned Saxena that failure to pay the fine will result in a court appearance. Saxena, who bought his white Hyundai car in March last year, is now hoping that the Noida Police will cancel this peculiar case against him.
In June last year, the Gautam Budh Nagar traffic police issued a ₹1,000 challan to a government school teacher for driving her car without a helmet in Noida’s Hoshiyarpur locality. The woman said that she did not own any bike registered in her name.
Man wears helmet while driving car in unique protest
A similar case was reported from Bharatpur, Rajasthan in 2017, when a man was mistakenly fined for not wearing a helmet while driving his Maruti Omni minivan.
Vishnu Sharma, who was 23 at that time, was stopped by the traffic police on the Agra-Jaipur national highway for checking. A constable fined him for not wearing helmet, he said.
To mark his protest in a humorous way, the driver began wearing a helmet while driving his car. “I showed them all documents, but they insisted on imposing fine. I had fastened the seat belt,” he said. “I don’t want to be fined again,” he said, when asked why he used a helmet while driving a car.
The policeman admitted that it was a mistake.
“I wanted to fine him for not using seat belt, but mistakenly wrote ‘not wearing helmet’,” constable Prahlad Singh told Hindustan Times.
