Bike goons still at large, barricades lock up city
Traffic on arterial roads in Delhi moved at a snail’s pace as Delhi Police put up barricades, looking for motorcycle-borne suspects in the recent serial shootings in the city, reports Nivedita Khandekar.
Traffic on arterial roads in east Delhi moved at a snail’s pace on Wednesday as Delhi Police put up barricades, looking for motorcycle-borne suspects in the recent serial shootings in the city. At the end of the day, the exercise proved futile — one that only caused commuters hours of delay on the road.
No one was nabbed, and it wasn’t a deterrent. Two more robberies by bikers were reported from Mayur Vihar and Preet Vihar.
Barricades were put up by at Nizamuddin bridge and at Mathura Road-Sundar Nagar. Nizamuddin bridge saw a huge traffic jam around noon, stretching beyond Akshardham junction on NH 24, and vehicles headed towards Ring Road were held up for more than an hour. The barricades left space only for a single vehicle to pass at a time. And the cops deployed there for ‘checking’ were doing nothing except stand and wave at random at a two-wheeler to stop.
Sources said the jams were so massive that seniors in Delhi Police and the Delhi Traffic Police received several complaints. Adding to the problem were six vehicles that had broken down on the same stretch.
Traffic cops took up the matter with police. DCP South HGS Dhaliwal flashed a wireless message warning his men standing idle at the barricades.
Said Vandana Mittal, traveling from Indira Puram to CP, “It took me 40 minutes to cross the two-km stretch on the bridge. How can they hold up people for checking? Is it of any use?”
JCP (Traffic) SN Shrivastava refused to comment.