GUJRAT, Jan 19: A prayer leader was shot dead by unidentified assailants in the limit of the Railway police station here on Sunday.

Qari Abdul Jaleel was standing outside the mosque of the police station when gunmen came there and shot him to death on the spot. Railway police sent the body to mortuary for autopsy. The motive behind the killing could not be known. The deceased was the prayer leader of the railway mosque.

No case has been registered till the filing of this report.

FINED: The traffic police on Friday claim to have fined some 65,921 vehicles and their drivers for violating traffic rules and recovered Rs13.5 million during the year 2002.

Traffic DSP Mehmoodul Hassan told newsmen that an increase of 2,348 fines had been recorded as compared to the previous year.

In 2001, a sum of Rs8.6 million had been collected as fine while in 2002, Rs13.4 million was collected with an increase of Rs4.8 million in revenue, he said.

To avert serious accidents and as precautionary measures, some 641 cases under Section 279 were registered against careless drivers and 224 driving licences and 73 route permits were recommended for cancellation, the DSP said.

To create awareness about traffic sense and rules, the traffic police had arranged 97 safety lectures for commercial and private drivers, and 35 lectures for students, he said.

The traffic police had erected 241 hoardings of traffic slogans on various roads, he concluded.