Hyderabad traffic police to seize vehicles sans paper

Hyderabad: The Hyderabad traffic police will begin seizing vehicles without proper ownership documents from January 1. Vehicle owners will have to approach the courts to get their vehicles back.

As a trial run, the traffic police briefly seized about 600 vehicles during checks on Friday and Saturday. The owners were counselled on the importance of having the right documents, and the vehicles were returned to them.

The police estimates that about eight lakh of the total 40 lakh vehicles in the city do not have ownership documents. The traffic police found recently that nearly 30 per cent of e-challans sent to traffic rule violators via Speedpost were not being acknowledged as received. One of the main reasons was that the vehicle owners had shifted house but had not registered their new address with the RTA.

In several cases, the ownership had not been transferred after the sale of the vehicle. This makes it difficult to track down the owners of vehicles which are involved in a range of crimes from terrorist attacks to chain-snatching to hit-and-run accidents.

A senior official of the Hyderabad Traffic Police said, “People buy second-hand vehicles from brokers and do not bother to register their ownership. The seller is responsible for ensuring that the vehicle has been registered in the buyer's name. Otherwise the seller will be in trouble if the vehicle is involved in some crime. To put pressure on the buyers to register their vehicle ownership we will start seizing vehicles found without proper ownership documents.”