Bad driving or influence-peddling?: ‘Baabu’, cop join hands to give errant bus driver an earful

Bus allegedly overtook govt official illegally; official ‘used rank’ to assure punishment.

ISLAMABAD: An allegedly wayward bus driver defied all the insults he suffered at the hands of a senior government officer and continued showing his driving skills on the motorway on Sunday.

Forty-five people passengers coming from Faisalabad to Islamabad on the reputable bus service not only suffered a delay, but for a while at least, feared for their lives.

Some passengers blamed the government official, a federal joint secretary, for causing an unnecessary delay of almost half an hour, while others held the bus driver responsible for the delay, accusing him of rash driving and speeding.

One of the passengers on the bus told The Express Tribune that their vehicle was stopped by the Motorway Police Inspector Khalid near Chakri. The police official asked the driver to wait for a joint secretary who had lodged a complaint against him for reckless driving.

“The joint secretary arrived after 10-15 minutes and then started arguing with the driver,” said passenger Sardar Irshad. The driver maintained that he had committed no violation and the government officer was falsely accusing him, Irshad added.

A spokesperson for the Motorway police, Javed Chaudhry, said the motorway police act on every complaint lodged by any commuter, regardless of their status.

However, some passengers, irked by the delay, said the officer used his influence over the police and treated them like his subordinates at the scene. “The joint secretary shouted at the bus driver and then told the police to fine him for reckless driving,” said another passenger.

“The argument left passengers waiting inside the bus for almost 45 minutes,” said Irshad, but the motorway spokesperson denied the claim and said the bus driver admitted his mistake before the police officer at the scene and was fined Rs300 for reckless driving. “He overtook the complainant’s car from the wrong lane, a violation of lane discipline,” said Chaudhry.

A female passenger endorsed his point of view. She told The Express Tribune that the bus driver overtook the secretary’s Toyota Corolla from the wrong side just before entering the accident-prone Salt Range section near Kalar Kahar.

“He was stopped by the police for just 10-15 minutes and was fined, but then he continued with irresponsible driving and was even more careless the rest of the way,” she said.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 12^th, 2012.