Cops in Mangaluru, Udupi wake up after Kundapur crash; check school vehicles

Mangaluru, Jun 22: A day after a ghastly road mishap claimed lives of eight school children and injured a dozen others at Trasi in Kundapur taluk, police units in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts conducted surprise checking of vehicles ferrying school children in the morning and evening.

Mangaluru City Police Commissioner M Chandra Sekhar, Dakshina Kannada SP Bhushan Gulabrao Borase and Udupi SP Annamalai K have held discussions with their subordinates to implement the school vehicle regulations strictly and immediately.

The action began on Wednesday morning with traffic police catching many motorists unaware with their checks at prime traffic junctions here to ensure safe drive to school.

In Mangaluru city, teams of traffic police were posted at the Navabharat Circle, St. Agnes College Circle and in Surathakal to check the school vans, cars and two-wheelers in which children were being taken to school. The exercise was coordinated by Assistant Commissioner of Police Uday Nayak, who stationed himself at Navabharat Circle at 8 a.m.

The Navarbharat Circle is an imporatant junction in the city and close to six primary and secondary schools. School vans of other schools also pass through this prime traffic junction.

The police were checking of the school vans were following the norms, such as carrying only permitted number of students, presence of a lady helper in the vehicle, and ensuring that children are not transported to schools in either private vehicles or autorickshaws. The police also insisted that the pillions on two-wheelers wear helmets.

At the Navabharat Circle, several motorists were booked for violating traffic norms. There were a good number of commercial vans and private vans carrying more than 10 children. Several school vans were found carrying students more than the permitted number. Many schools vans did not have the mandatory woman helper. There were a number of two-wheeler riders who taking children, who were not wearing helmets, to school. The police actually found it hard to stop the violators and book cases against them.

Similar was the scene at the St. Agnes College Circle. To avoid being booked by police, van drivers were seen dropping children 100 meters before the circle and making students walk down to their schools.

The DK district police created awareness among the drivers and urged them to reduce the number of students in the vehicle at Belthangady, Bantwal, Puttur and at Sullia. Puttur ASP C B Ryshyanth, Additional SP Dr Vedamurthy also led the team in checking the school vehicles at a few locations.

SP Annamalai said that he would take stringent action to completely avoid the reoccurrence of such incidents. The department would henceforth monitor strictly the violations. The vehicles carrying the school children will also be scrutinized stringently and alert actions would be taken in the days to come, he added.