The ongoing drive against jaywalking appears to have yielded a positive result as the majority of pedestrians complied with rules while crossing roads at three points in the capital city yesterday despite the absence of mobile courts.
The movement of pedestrians at Banglamotor, Karwan Bazar and Farmgate was disciplined and no one had to pay fines, except a few jaywalkers who were detained at adjacent police boxes for 5-10 minutes.
Mobile courts did not operate yesterday, and will not today either, because of the weekend, but most of the pedestrians still took footbridges to cross roads.
The courts, as part of the week-long drive of Dhaka Metropolitan Police against jaywalking which started on Tuesday, will resume operations tomorrow, DMP Joint Commissioner (traffic) Mosleh Uddin told the Dhaka Tribune.
Two mobile courts led by Executive Magistrates Md Sarwoer Alam and Abdul Kuddus fined jaywalkers on the first three days of the drive. More than 700 jaywalkers were fined around Tk46,000. Around 12 at noon yesterday, Sub-Inspector Md Abul Kalam Azad detained a man named Shafiq for crossing road at Banglamotor without taking the footbridge, but the jaywalker said he was unaware of the ongoing drive. The policeman took Shafiq back to other side of the road and made him cross it again by using the footbridge.
Another jaywalker named Rizia Begum, 52, made the same argument but police let her go considering her age.
Several others were allowed by police to breach rules while crossing roads for their illness and disability.
Besides, on the second day of the drive, the court led by Sarwoer sentenced a female jaywalker to a month in prison for biting a police official, who stopped her from jaywalking.