Noida police fines driver Rs 1,000 for not wearing a helmet - in a car

The driver Tushar Saxena further said that he had never driven his car in the area where the fine has occurred

A resident of Rampur district in Uttar Pradesh, Tushar Saxena was baffled when he received a Rs 1,000 fine from the Noida traffic police, citing a violation for driving without a helmet, according to a report by NDTV. The unusual part: It was in relation to Saxena driving a car. Moreover, Saxena said he has never driven his car in Uttar Pradesh’s Gautam Buddh Nagar district, where Noida is located.

Initially, Saxena dismissed the text message informing him of the fine, assuming it was a mistake. However, when he received an email and another message, he decided to contact the traffic police. To his surprise, he was informed that the fine was for driving his four-wheeler without a helmet.

“The challan was issued on November 9, 2023. If you are violating traffic rules, then it is common to receive a fine but that is not my case. I have never driven my car to the NCR area. And if there’s any rule that says we have to wear a helmet inside a car, then the authorities must give this to me in writing,” Saxena told NDTV.

Saxena, who purchased his car in March of the previous year, got the vehicle’s registration transferred from Ghaziabad to Rampur. He has since appealed to the Noida traffic police to investigate the matter and revoke the fine.

Strange fines - not an isolated incident

This is not the first time such a mistake has occurred. The Hindustan Times had reported on a similar incident that happened in Jhansi, where Bahadur Singh Parihar was fined Rs 1,000 by the city’s traffic police for not wearing a helmet while driving his Audi car. Parihar approached the authorities but was told the matter would be addressed after the Lok Sabha elections. Until then, he resorted to wearing a bike helmet while driving to avoid further fines.

In June of the previous year, Gautam Buddh Nagar traffic police issued a Rs 1,000 fine to a government school teacher in Noida’s Hoshiyarpur locality for driving her car without a helmet, despite her not owning any bike registered in her name.

Similarly, in 2017, a man in Bharatpur, Rajasthan, was mistakenly fined for not wearing a helmet while driving his Maruti Omni minivan. The man, Vishnu Sharma, also resorted to wearing a helmet while driving his car to protest the fine, even though the constable later admitted the mistake, stating he had intended to issue a fine for not wearing a seatbelt.
 

Tushar Saxena, like others before him, hopes that the authorities will rectify the mistake and prevent similar errors in the future.