The Calcutta Traffic Police is in the limelight again. This time for the right and the wrong causes simultaneously! The same sergeant, Sudip Kumar Maity, who booked the Driver of the powerful CPI(M) MP Tarit Topdar at Shyam Bazar five point crossing, a month ago, lodged a general diary (No.561) against his boss Tapan Kumar Mitra, officer-in-charge of Shyam Bazar traffic guard, for pressuring him not to take action against a lorry driver who not only violated traffic signal but did not have the registration papers also.
The unfurled story is like this. Sergeant S.P.Maity intercepted a lorry, with Orissa number plate (OR15G-1532), for signal violation at the Cossipore intersection, on Monday the 7th July. As the lorry driver could not produce registration papers, Maity called a reclamation van and towed the lorry to Cossipore police station.
Here, his boss, the OC Traffic Guard Shyam Bazar, T.K.Mitra contacted him over telephone and ordered him to release the lorry. But Maity refused to bow down and allowed the lorry to go only after production of registration papers and payment of fine by the driver. Maity thought that the matter ended there. But that was not to be.
As per Maity, on Tuesday morning, Mitra visited him at the Cossipore intersection where some 20 youths followed Mitra and started abusing him at the instigation of his boss. “Some of them heckled me and even tried to damage my bike. I was shocked to see that my boss was doing nothing”, said Maity.
Maity said that he felt his blood pressure shooting up during the incident and went straight to the police hospital on his bike and got himself admitted. Maity later lodged the diary and called up K.Hariharan, additional commissioner traffic and Manoj Verma, deputy commissioner of traffic to narrate his story.
When contacted Hariharan said, “I have come to know about the incident and a probe is on in the matter. Action will be taken on the findings.” However Mitra declined to comment on the episode.