Nagpur: Even while enforcing Covid restrictions strictly, the city police displayed their humane side. On Residency Road in Sadar on Wednesday, they booked a motorist but ensured the senior citizens accompanying him reached their destination — a hospital in this case.
On Day 3 of the extended Covid-19 restrictions in city, police deputy commissioner (DCP) Vinita Sahu and her staff detained a youngster driving a car bearing the registration number MH 40 BJ 1125 for willingly obstructing public servants from performing their duties, when they were staffing a checkpoint on Residency Road.
Cops were stopping motorists at the checkpoint and asking why they were on the streets. They stopped a young man driving a car in which two senior citizens were seated. The man started quarrelling with the cops and questioned the DCP as to why she did not take action against a lady who was travelling with a child in an auto rickshaw.
When TOI asked the DCP why the youth was punished, she said he didn't cooperate with cops when they asked him to show his documents. “I told him we are asking everyone to show their documents (including the lady he mentioned) and to tell us why they are out on the streets. The lady did not argue with us; she promptly showed us a hospital file which my staff and I verified and let her go, along with her child in the autorickshaw,” Sahu explained.
But the youth driving the car still did not cooperate, she added. “He picked up an argument and hence I asked my staff to register an offence under Section 186 of the Indian Penal Code, and told him we can even apply Section 353 if the offence is of aggravated nature.”
The DCP further said, “We are not inhuman. As police officers, we understand the needs of the public. It's only when people don't cooperate, become arrogant, start arguing and don't pay fines that we have to take such actions.”
The youngster was taken to the police station but the DCP ensured that the senior citizens who were in the car reached the hospital, arranging for police personnel to drive their car there.