Man arrested for breaking wheel clamp walks free
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, November 3
A local court has acquitted a Sirsa resident of charges of breaking a wheel clamp put up on his car for wrong parking by the Chandigarh Police.
Sumit Kumar Gupta (31) was the first to be arrested in the city for such an offence in April last year.
The police had registered an FIR against Kumar under Section 3 of the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, 1984. According to his counsels Arun Kumar and Varun Bhardwaj, he was arrested and kept in police custody for four days. However, the prosecution could not prove the case and hence Kumar was acquitted by the court.
According to the FIR, on April 7, 2016, the police clamped both front wheels of an Indica car parked wrongly in the Grain Market, Sector 26. They also left a warning note informing the driver of the challan and leaving a phone number to contact at. Soon, they received a phone call from Kumar who was informed about the release process, which involved paying the fine at the Traffic Police Lines in Sector 29.
The complaint of Head Constable Balwinder Singh on the basis of which the FIR was registered says Kumar then contacted them to remove the clamps as he had paid the fine at the Traffic Lines. When the policemen reached the spot, they discovered that while one of the wheel clamps was full of muck, the other one was broken. The police, thus, registered a case against him and took him in custody.
The defence in its arguments said the wheel clamp was not broken intentionally by Kumar and thus the case against him was incorrect. Also, during the trial, the prosecution could not prove the charges against Kumar and he was thus acquitted by the court.
