Pune car fitted with device to hide number plate, driver faces 51 speeding fines

A video of a Fortuner's number plate vanishing on its own on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway went viral on social media, prompting the Pimpri-Chinchwad Regional Transport Office (RTO) to launch action against the driver. The video showed that pressing a button inside the car brought down a black cover over the number plate, completely hiding it within seconds.

The car is said to belong to Vijay Dagde, a resident of the Tathawade area. As soon as the video surfaced, RTO officials began searching for the vehicle, and the investigation found that the Fortuner already had a large number of pending e-challans. The car reportedly had 56 e-challans in total, of which 51 were for overspeeding, while one was for violating a no-entry rule.

Officials are also examining whether the mechanism was fitted specifically to dodge speed cameras on the highway. Highway cameras record the number plate when a vehicle overspeeds or breaks other rules, following which e-challans are issued. Police and the RTO suspect the system was installed to keep the number plate hidden from the camera and avoid this action.

The car is reported to have outstanding fines of more than one lakh rupees. Officials are now also checking whether the number plate was concealed only once or whether the rule had been broken this way multiple times before. Fitting such a device to deliberately hide the number plate is being treated as a direct violation of the rules, and on this basis the Pimpri-Chinchwad Regional Transport Office has filed a police complaint seeking legal action against the driver.

According to Sub-Regional Transport Officer Ashwini Swami, officials will also check whether the vehicle was used in any other case earlier, and whether this number-plate-hiding trick had been tried before.

The investigation triggered by the viral video brought to light the full record of challans that had piled up on the vehicle over time. The attempt to hide the number plate from cameras reached the administration because of social media, and the entire setup, along with the pending challans, will now be investigated in detail.

The vehicle's full record: driver Vijay Dagde, total e-challans 56, of which 51 are for overspeeding and one for a no-entry violation, with outstanding fines of more than one lakh rupees, of which only 4,500 rupees has been recovered so far.