Cabbie driving on wrong side heckles police sergeant

A Kolkata Police sergeant was on Monday allegedly roughed up by a taxi driver of a cab aggregator company at the MG Road and Amherst Street crossing, after the cop tried to stop the vehicle for driving on the wrong side.

Police arrested the accused driver Afsar Hossain on the charges of heckling an on-duty police officer. They stated that the accused driver was driving his vehicle on the wrong side.

After seeing the vehicle in the wrong direction, the on-duty police sergeant of Sealdah Traffic Guard, Abhisek Kumar Bari intercepted the vehicle and stopped him on the spot.

When the officer asked the driver as to why he violated the one way restriction, the accused began arguing with the traffic sergeant. The driver subsequently got down from his vehicle and began hurling abuses at the officer. He was also reportedly roughed up by the accused. Seeing the incident, some local people gathered in the area.

Police said that one of the bystanders – apparently a mediaperson – was also roughed up by the accused driver when he raised protests for the police sergeant being abused. Police later arrested the accused driver who has been booked under sections of 353, 341/323 of the Indian Penal Code. The state Transport department will probe into the incident and has sought a detailed report from the senior officials of the cab aggregator company under whom the accused works. A committee has been formed to look into the issue.

The incident comes three days after the state Food and Supplies Minister Jyotipriyo Mullick was heckled by some auto-rickshaw drivers at Mirza Ghalib Street, while protesting against the illegal parking of their vehicles in front of Khadya Bhavan.

A home guard of the Kolkata Traffic Police was also beaten up at the same spot on Saturday, when he asked an auto-rickshaw driver to remove his vehicle parked in front of Khadya Bhavan.

Police later arrested the accused auto-driver. It may also be mentioned that there have been repeated incidents of public heckling by many auto-rickshaw and taxi drivers in the city.