Touts in Transport department team trouble non-Karnataka vehicle owners

Official denies presence of middlemen, promises to look into plaints

There seems to be no end to the harassment of owners of vehicles registered outside the State, by officials of the RTO and the enforcement wing of the Transport department.

Two complaints reached the office of the Transport commissioner last week and are being inquired into.

Last week, a senior doctor at a well-known private hospital and a techie working in a tech park wrote complaints to the commissioner seeking his intervention in the matter and said that they were harassed by the enforcement team, which included some RTO officials and some unauthorised persons.

Duo at fault
Transport Commissioner Ramegowda said, “I am aware of both the cases and have spoken to the doctor and the techie. We will inquire into the complaints. But prime facie, the duo was at fault. The complaints of touts are completely false. It is the team of BMTC staff which assists in the enforcement drives as we are severely short-staffed.”

Sample this: Dr Sukumar (name changed), a gastroenterologist was on his way to work on Thursday when he was stopped by some touts near Jayadeva Hospital.

“I got out of the car and was escorted to where the official of the Regional Transport Office was standing by an unauthorised person. I was asked to show the documents. Since the car belonged to my wife’s father who had just arrived from Coimbatore, I showed them the toll receipts, but they did not accept it.”

“I started walking back towards my car and this person pushed me and tried to grab my keys. I was scared, so I locked myself up in the car and drove away,” he said. In a similar incident on Friday near Electronics City Gate number 12, where a massive enforcement drive was on to check outstation vehicles belonging to techies working in the tech parks.

“I was asked to hand over my keys after a person in civil clothes stopped me and asked for the car’s registration certificate. I told him that I needed to get it from home. I was abused by a group of these people who were not the RTO officials and were with the team. When I asked them to show me proof that they were RTO officials, a police official was called and they all started pushing me towards the police station,” said Ashis Kumar Panda, the techie.

Internal email
Afraid of being targeted by the RTO officials again since he works in that area, Panda sent out an internal email within his group appealing to the Human Resource sections of several companies to step in and help sort out the issue.