The vehicle was allotted to a DCP who had retired days earlier, and police say statements are being recorded from the driver and his passenger.
A car with a DCP nameplate on it was filmed zigzagging through Indore's Pardeshipura area, hitting a child on a bicycle and, minutes later, an elderly man on a scooter. Both reportedly escaped serious injury. The video did the rounds on social media through Saturday and by Sunday, the city's police had opened an inquiry into who was driving and why.
The footage shows the car, registration number MP 03 A 8674, moving from one side of the road to the other in a manner that one passerby on a bike thought serious enough to follow and record on his own phone. According to the Free Press Journal, two policemen were inside the vehicle.
The sequence, as reported, runs like this. The car comes from the Clerk Colony side and hits a boy riding a bicycle, who falls onto the road. The driver allegedly does not stop. The car carries on through Kalash Square toward Bhandari Bridge, at points reportedly coming close enough to other vehicles that some people on the road tried to flag the driver down and ask him to slow up. They backed off, according to the report, once they clocked the DCP nameplate. At Bhandari Bridge, the car allegedly hits a scooter, registration MP 09 UE 3531. Its rider, an elderly man, loses his balance and falls toward the footpath. Minor injuries, reportedly.
There are allegations doing the rounds that the driver was drunk. Nobody has confirmed that. Police haven't said either way, and until they do, it stays an allegation.
What police are saying
RI Deepak Patil, who has been assigned the case by senior officers, told the Free Press Journal that the driver and the person with him in the car have been called in to record their statements. "We are also trying to contact the person who was hit by the car so appropriate action can be taken against the guilty," Patil said. No action against anyone has been confirmed as of this reporting.
Here's the wrinkle that makes this stranger than a routine rash-driving case. Sources told the Free Press Journal the car had been allotted to DCP (Zone 4) Sunil Mehta, and that it was heading back to the DRP Line after dropping him home on September 1, following his voluntary retirement, when the incident happened. So the official vehicle was reportedly still in use, on official plates, days after the officer it belonged to had already left the force. Whether that detail changes anything about who's accountable for what happened on that road is now police work to sort out.
The investigation is at the statement-recording stage. Whether the child on the bicycle or the elderly rider have been formally contacted, and whether alcohol tests were conducted on the driver, has not been made public yet.
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