Chennai: In the name of cracking the whip on motorists who race their vehicles on the East Coast Road over weekends, the city police on Sunday temporarily confiscated as many as 10 high end luxury cars including a Porsche, a Ferrari, a Mercedes Benz, an Audi and three Lamborghinis.
The cars, which had stopped at the Uthandi toll gate on ECR, had attracted a lot of attention with people thronging the toll booth to take selfies. The pictures of the sporting machines went viral on the social media.
One of the youths, identified as Raghav Krishnan, who was driving a Lamborghini, was arrested by the police after he allegedly ran his car over the foot of a police inspector when the law enforcing officer tried to stop the vehicle on Sunday morning around 10.30 am near the toll gate.
The police claimed they had been receiving complaints from ECR residents of rash and dangerous driving of high end luxury cars and sports cars. In a related incident of speeding, a youth, who was reportedly racing on his bike against his friend on ECR early on Saturday, died under a government bus near Mahabalipuram.
On Sunday morning, at around 6.30, the police tried to stop the speeding cars near Akkarai on ECR after they received complaints from the people. “They refused to stop. Then we used more force and stopped all the vehicles near the Uthandi toll gate. The car users were refusing to show their papers and also refused to cooperate with the police who were acting on complaints from the local residents.
Residents claimed that every Saturday and Sunday such speeding cars cause a threat to other road users,” a senior traffic police official said. After detaining the cars in one bay of the tollgate for nearly 4 hours, police shifted all the cars to the road near Kanathur police station.
