Man changes number plate to avoid fine

The e-challan for violation of traffic rules is helping unearth some unusual crimes in the city. Almost a fortnight after an e-challan helped find a stolen vehicle, another e-challan has brought to light a case of misrepresentation.

This time the cops found that a person changed his licence plate to escape paying past dues and also avoid any future challans.

The matter came to light when Suhav Patel, a resident of Gandhinagar approached the city police commissioner for the 25 some-challans that were being sent to him. Patel told the cops that while he number GJ-18BH5962 was the licence plate of his Bolero car, the e-challan showed an Etios car. He suspected someone else was using his licence plate number.

Following the application, cops began an investigation to know the mystery of the licence number with the wrong car. "We suspected it could be a case of RTO giving the same number to two cars. We then began looking for Etios cars that had the series 59 and found one that had the number 5952," said the cops.

They found that the car belonged to one Chandresh Raval in Gandhinagar. "He was called to the police station and during interrogation, he confessed to changing his number plates," said the police. Raval had apparently got himself 15 e-challans for his Etios car and to avoid being caught for further violations he changed his number plate to 5962.