Cyberabad police go door-to-door as tens of thousands of challans remain unpaid

In a first for Hyderabad, traffic police have started knocking on the doors of violators with huge amounts of unpaid challans. Cyberabad police, who launched this initiative in May this year, said they took this initiative to eliminate challenges that have been pending for years and prevent repeat crimes.

This crackdown also comes in the wake of a series of serious incidents involving vehicles with unpaid challans this year. Even in the recent Chevella tragedy in which 19 people died, the truck was carrying numerous free challans for violations such as entering no-go zones, skipping signals and crossing the stop line, as was the case with the bus involved in the Kurnool fire accident.

The numbers revealed the extent of the problem. He was found to have accumulated more than 100 challans in each of the 24 vehicles, while the count of one of the criminals reached 162. Police also detected 12,425 vehicles with exactly 10 challans and 42,777 challans between 11 and 20. Another 7,325 were found to have accumulated between 21 and 30 challans, while 2,081 were found to have accumulated between 31 and 40 challans. 734 vehicles carried 41 to 50 challans and 551 vehicles had 51 to 100 challans. Eight vehicles had 121 or more challans.

To deal with the backlog, small departmental teams of two to three staff were formed to track down owners, visit their homes and ensure payments were made. “Out of 1,723 people with more than 30 challans, 1,286 have already paid their dues. The initiative is yielding results with many criminals paying at least half, if not the entire amount. Otherwise, criminals continue to wait for the discount or allow the discount to accumulate,” said a senior traffic officer from Cyberabad, pointing out that persistent criminals are often the same people involved in serious road accidents.

The officer also confirmed that many vehicles flagged during the drive were found to be linked to criminal cases. A few were stolen vehicles and were being resold unofficially without any transfer of ownership, resulting in the original owners still receiving Challan messages. Challans hit a dead end if the original owner has changed his contact details.

Announcing the collection of challan amount, the officer said that the money goes to the State treasury, while around ₹35 per challan is collected as convenience fee for digital processing. “Then there are nominal deductions of Rs 14 from each challan for software maintenance and postal charges etc,” he said.

Challans coming soon on WhatsApp

Meanwhile, Cyberabad police will soon send PDFs of challans to violators via WhatsApp instead of the traditional postal letter format. The official shared that tenders have been sent to a company to handle the backend and technical process for the shift. This will reduce delays and waste of paper, the officer said.