Kolkata police have started a drive to identify vehicles involved in hit-and-run cases. In most of the cases the offending vehicles fled the accident spot leaving the victim to die on the road, police said.
Out of the 18 such cases that were reported in the city since January 1 this year, the police have identified the offending vehicles in 12 cases till May 12, sources in the traffic department said.
According to a police officer, tracing an offending vehicle turns more and more difficult with time and a large number of such vehicles remain “unknown”. The police are now trying to zero in on such “unknown” vehicles with the help of CCTV camera footage and witness accounts.
Last year alone, there were at least 24 fatal accidents in the city where the offending vehicles are yet to be identified. As many as 196 people had died in road accidents in the city in 2021. “While examining CCTV footage we often see that drivers stop the car after accidents, peep out of the window to see the condition of the victims and then speed away,” a police officer said.
The 12 fatal accidents in which the offending vehicles have been identified were reported from Thakurpukur, Girish Park, West Port, Beniapukur, Rabindra Sarobar, Hastings, Shyampukur and Pragati Maidan police station areas, the police said.
“The offending vehicles have been detected with the help of CCTV camera footage. Not all accident spots had CCTV cameras in the vicinity. In such cases we spoke to witnesses and collected the description of the cars. We then collected footage from the nearest CCTV cameras and matched the description of the witnesses with the cars in the footage,” said a senior officer of the traffic police in Lalbazar.
The description would also be tallied with the vehicle database at the motor vehicles department.
Out of the 12 cases that have been cracked, in eight, the offending vehicles are large and small trucks, while a yellow taxi, an auto-rickshaw, a trailer and a private car were involved in the remaining four cases, the police said.
Several officers of the traffic department The Telegraph spoke to said identifying and punishing such vehicles was very important to discourage people from rash driving.
“Unless you catch the culprit how will you stop them from repeating the offence,” said an officer.
“More than anything else, it is a huge emotional blow to the family members of the deceased if they fail to know who killed their near and dear ones,” said another officer.