Drink-driving cases on the wane in February in West Bengal

KOLKATA: The Kolkata Traffic Police has prosecuted an average of 42 motorists in February this year, a much lower figure from the 72 prosecuted per day last year, for drink-driving. The data was released by cops on Tuesday. The cops have confirmed a bigger crackdown is on the cards, with Holi barely a week away.
While there were 42 prosecutions on Monday night, there were 41 prosecutions on February 21 and 43 prosecutions on February 14. There were 44 prosecutions on February 2 and another 42 prosecutions on February 7.
In 2021, cops had prosecuted merely seven drink drivers daily. In 2019, this figure stood at 23 daily.
Cops attributed the fall mainly due to a break in festivities in February. “With Holi around, these numbers will once again spike,” said an officer. The other reason was the number of checks have gone down during weekdays. In winter, there were stringent checks in major roads across the city including party zones like Park Street, Sarat Bose Road, Southern Avenue and EM Bypass. Police said they were instead targeting places where the rule breakers lived.
Cops said, it was guards from the added areas like Diamond Harbour Road (4 cases), Regent Park (4 cases), Purba Jadavpur (3 cases) and Kasba (2 cases) which are returning bigger numbers each night along with Jorabagan (5), Ultadanga (3) and Beliaghata (3). These numbers are higher than traditional drink driving zones like South, Headquarters (Dalhousie-Esplanade) and East (Park Circus-Ballygunge). In fact, for several nights, Headquarters and East guards returned zero figures.