Chennai: The owners of high end sporting cars cried foul over the incident saying that police detained them for hours without a valid reason.
“We were going for breakfast event at a star hotel in Kovalam and we are now waiting here for the last four hours pleading with the cops to release our cars”, a car owner said.
All of them looked fr
ustrated with the police action and claimed that they can’t race or over-speed in such high end cars on ECR. The low ground clearance of the cars may not be suited for the ECR road near the city as they sport plenty of speed breakers.
“We know each other. We, members of Madras Piston Heads club, usually do such outing on Sundays. We never race with each other and over-speed. Each police officer we spoke to gave us a different reason for being made to wait. We don’t drive fast as we cannot speed on this road”, claimed A. Abhi, chairman of the club, who had rushed to the scene to sort out issues between the club members and the police.
According to Vigneshwar Rajkumar, who was travelling with his wife, the police never informed him what was the offence committed by him and others while their cars were stopped.
“We really don’t know our mistake. They just asked us to stop. We carry all our documents. I had to send my wife home by a cab after the police stopped us. We were made to wait here for hours,” he told reporters at Kanathur.
“Maybe, the police want to show that they are taking action against racing. But they should catch hold of people who really do drag racing and not us,” one of the car users said.
All the 10 luxury and sports cars were stopped near Uthandi toll gate from 6.30 onwards and the place became a hot spot for selfie takers. Youths were found taking selfies with a line of cars in the background and also taking videos of the luxury cars lined up on the toll gate till the vehicles were moved to a place near Kanathur police station at around 11.30 am.
Police later charged the car owners, belonging to the club, with rash driving and dangerous driving endangering personal safety of others.
One of the car users was booked under a section of causing hurt to deter a public servant from doing his duty after he drove the car over the foot of a police officer. Madras Pistons Club chairman claimed that the arrested driver was not a member of his club and that he was on his own.
Youth in high end car runs over cop’s foot
Neelankarai traffic inspector Soundar Rajan, who had been active since 6 am on ECR and got busy stopping all the speeding sports cars, was shocked by the action of Raghav Krishnan, who was driving a Lamborghini Aventador 700 4 coupe (TN 10 AU -0555), which could cost upto Rs 5 crore, registered in the name of Devaker K.
“He showed no respect for the police and other people at the toll gate. When we tried to stop the car which was going towards Mahabalipuram, he took a right turn and tried to use the wrong side to pass through the tollgate. He stopped for a while. As we were following him, we tried to accost him when he suddenly dodged us and ran over my foot and drove away,” inspector Soundar Rajan told this newspaper.
He showed scant respect to other people’s lives and that of law enforcing officers, the police inspector noted. “Somebody from his family later called me to say sorry and apologised for the mistake saying that the youth did it because he was ignorant. I said that police can’t allow such things to take place,” the inspector said.
