You’re driving at midnight. A traffic cop asks you to stop. It’s a routine check or so it seems. Are you driving in an inebriated state? Or carrying a prohibitive substance in the car’s storage space? And you better have all your car papers, including your driving licence.
All healthy and legitimate checks until it gets a tad uncomfortable. The police insist on taking your picture without your consent, even though you haven’t committed an offence.
This breach of privacy has become a cause for concern for citizens who commute at night in Ahmedabad. The details are collected on the department’s Tarkash App, making them increasingly uncomfortable about the processes.
A city tabloid reported several instances of people, including a woman, whose pictures were clicked under the pretext of routine checks for drivers during night patrolling.
“Apart from seeking my driving licence and other documents, they clicked my photo without my consent. When I confronted them, they said it is part of the checking process,” she told the newspaper. “Why do they need the picture when all the details including photos are available on the documents? In times of cyber fraud, why do the police need to disclose a woman’s identity and take her picture?”
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic East) Safin Hasan told the paper, “Taking a photo of the driver is legal and there’s nothing wrong with it.”
But is the intrusion of privacy legal?
Court lawyer Anand Yagnik was quoted as saying, “Gujarat follows the Bombay Police Act (BPA) and Motor Vehicles Act (MVA). The BPA provides the power of policing and under MVA the RTO as well as the police have the authority to check the vehicles.”
He added: “If there is any complaint against the person then the privacy can be breached while carrying out an investigation. However, if the person hasn’t violated any law and he is in his car, taking the person’s photograph is unconstitutional and illegal.”
Also Read: Mumbai Chokes On Traffic Due To Bullet Train, Metro Projects
