Bikers all over India head out on weekends to open highways in groups to enjoy their “bike-time” without the regular city traffic. The West Bengal police have started a crackdown on such bike groups and have seized as many as 40 bikes in a single day. Here’s what happened.
Bikes seized
The police started the crackdowns on such groups in a special drive. The cops targetted the bikers on the NH2 highway near Bardhaman, West Bengal. The police say that they have started the crackdown on illegal racing and rallies on highways, which is a regular place for the bikers to hang out on the weekends.
The video shows various bikes including Kawasaki Z250, Kawasaki Ninja 650, KTM RC390 and Honda CBR 250R being seized among others. Most of the bikes seen in the video are performance bikes available in the market. The police force deployed on the highway stop the bikers for checks and have also set-up speed traps that are targetted at the bikers. Later in the video, a couple of cops can be seen riding the seized Kawasaki Z250 and the Ninja 650.
The senior police officer says that currently the crackdown has taken place at only one place and in the coming weeks, the cops will do more such surprise checks across the state. He also says that the bikers were stopped when they were racing on the highway, and such racing take place all over the state. The senior police official further adds that they are monitoring CCTV footage from various cameras to keep a check on violators.
Giving further information, the cop says that the police are now starting early morning checks at 6 AM to catch most of these alleged racers. The cop adds that there is information about car racing on the highway too but they are yet to seize any cars till now.
Group riding or bike racing?
While we cannot comment for sure if the cops caught the bikers racing or speeding, there have been many instances in India where cops have stopped high-performance bikes on the road. The police compare group bike riding as racing and allege that wearing safety kits like riding jackets mean the riders will do high-speed runs and stunting. The awareness of biking in India is still limited, so bikers suffer a lot of such surprise checks on the highways across the country.
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