ONCE known for their sense of propriety and meticulous behaviour, the personnel of the Motorway Police seem to have joined their brethren in the other police forces when dealing with common citizens for traffic violations real and imagined.

A few days ago, I was travelling with my family from Lahore to Islamabad. My son was driving the vehicle.

Short of Chakkari, we were stopped by a lower ranked officer who started shouting at my son that he had been monitoring him, and making allegations that he was overspeeding and driving at 138 kilometres.

This was a surprise to us as we were absolutely certain that no such thing had happened. When I tried to intervene, the official rudely told me to keep quiet.

We challenged his stance and insisted on viewing the video that showed our vehicle was overspeeding. The official made a great show of making some calls on his mobile phone.

He then made the lame excuse that he had mixed up the registration numbers of vehicles.

I am writing these lines as this was my second experience of this sort in as many months, and I leave it to the public’s imagination as to what is going on. I also urge the higher authorities to look into the matter.

Ahmad Nadeem Syed

Islamabad

Published in Dawn, May 25th, 2016