Hyderabad: After several special drives and vehicles seizures by Hyderabad traffic police, there are 3,421 vehicles lying in the city traffic police stations, including 2,995 two-wheelers and 67 four wheelers. These vehicles are abandoned because many violators prefer leaving their vehicles instead of attending counselling sessions, facing court procedures and possible imprisonment for drunk driving.
Apart from different traffic violations, these vehicles are also seized for crimes such as hit-and-run, cheating, theft etc. It has become a big problem for the traffic police department to store the impounded vehicles as the number is increasing regularly, and a very few of them are being claimed by their owners.
The traffic police officials are struggling to maintain the parking of impounded vehicles which are parked in deserted conditions at the traffic police lines. The police has no solution to the seized vehicles as hardly anyone turns up to claim these vehicles and the response they get during auction is also poor.
Due to lack of space, the vehicles are left in open without proper care and many vehicles get dilapidated. Earlier when any drunken driver used to get caught, his/her vehicle used to be immediately siezed even if the person is caught with 35 Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC). But recently, the Hyderabad traffic police has decided to sieze vehicles of only drunken drivers who cross 100 BAC because of lack of parking space to keep these vehicles of the violators.
Traffic DCP A.V. Ranganath said, ‘’As we cannot accommodate all the vehicles in the traffic police stations, empty government lands have been identified to accommodate the vehicles caught during drunken driving on the New Year eve.
We have identified a RTC bus depot in Towlichowki for parking the vehicles we caught during drunken driving on New Year. Once the court proceedings are over, people who attend the court and counselling sessions get their vehicles but many who are scared of the imprisonment just leave their vehicles at the traffic police stations itself. We wait for one or two years for the vehicle owner to come for the vehicles. If they don’t come, we auction the vehicles’’.
Dr V. Ravinder, joint traffic commissioner said, ‘’So far we have not seen such people who come and report the vehicles as stolen and try to claim the vehicles.
Even if they try to do, it is not possible because we take all the details while seizing the vehicles, no matter whether its drunk driving or any other violation.
We take all the details and serve notices to the owners of the vehicles and if they don’t come, then we auction these vehicles after six months of notification’’.
