AARYAN SHARMA
JAMMU: Whenever tow away van of Traffic Police spots a wrongly parked car in the middle of the road or in front of any mall or shopping plaza here in the ‘City of Temples’, they try and lift the same and dump it in the Gulshan Ground yard.
The owners of the cars, often small cars like Maruti 800, Zen, Alto, Santro, i-10 are targeted by the Traffic Police as small cars are easier to be lifted than the bigger cars and luxurious SUVs.
Ironically, the same towing vans, which keep moving between different destinations within the municipal limits of the city, have never spotted hundreds of vehicles lying in defunct state across busy city crossings near special police Naka check points.
The same vehicles have become ‘junk’ and cannot be made operational by any expert mechanic yet these vehicles remain parked in the middle of the roads occupying vast spaces.
From the security point of view these small junk yards in front of the police check points pose a serious threat to the security of the police personnel and others in the area as the same can be misused by the anti national elements to trigger blasts by planting/hiding explosive (timer) material or lobbying a grenade.
The backyards of different police stations and busy crossings in Jammu including Indira Chowk, Nowabad Police Station, Bahu Fort Police Station, Gujjar Nagar Bridge and Janipur Crossing always remain choked with junked vehicles and no one in the Police Department has ever spared a thought to shift the junked vehicles to a safe location and create adequate space on the roads to ensure smooth movement of traffic.
Throughout the day senior cops keep shuttling between these destinations but even they have been keeping their eyes shut and not waking up to the potential threat.
