Stuntman with two girls on bike arrested after video of wheelie went viral
The issue came to light after social activist Mushtaq Ansari posted a video of the stunt on his Twitter account. Ansari puts several videos of bikers performing dangerous stunts on the streets of Mumbai without any protective gear
Mumbai: The biker whose video went viral on social media for carrying two girls on his bike while performing a dangerous stunt in BKC was arrested on Sunday. The police are still looking for the two girls in the video who are the co-accused.
The issue came to light after social activist Mushtaq Ansari posted a video of the stunt on his Twitter account. Ansari puts several videos of bikers performing dangerous stunts on the streets of Mumbai without any protective gear. After he shared these through the page titled Pothole Warriors, and tagged Mumbai Traffic Police, the videos went viral.
The video shows the rider performing a wheelie with one woman sitting on the pillion and another on the fuel tank of his motorcycle. Subsequently, the traffic police registered an official complaint in the BKC police station, booking the three under sections 279 (rash and negligent driving), 336 (endangering human life or safety of others) and 114 (abetment) of the Indian Penal Code and relevant sections of the Motor Vehicles Act on Friday.
Deputy commissioner of police for zone 8 Dikshit Gedam informed that the rider was identified as Faiyyaz Ahmad Azeemullah Qadri (24), a resident of Wadala. “He had previous cases registered against him at Wadala Truck Terminus police station as well as Antop Hill police station. Being wanted by the police, he kept changing his address. We tracked him down to his current address in Sakinaka and arrested him,” he said.
Gedam said that further investigation into the case including the identity of the female riders is underway.
Ansari, whose page has also been named by the traffic police in the FIR by the traffic police as the source of the information, said while he was expecting the police to be firm on the young men performing these stunts, he didn’t think there would be an arrest. “I guess they must have arrested Qadri based on his previous criminal records. When I made the complaints on Twitter, all I wanted was the police to be firm with these stuntmen and come up with ways to deter them from endangering their own lives as well as others,” he said.
Ansari who started out with a crusade against the high number of potholes riddling the streets of Mumbai in 2018 along with fellow Mahim resident Irfan Macchiwala has come across several road accident cases caused by the bad quality of roads in Mumbai. He eventually came to the realisation that many times, such accidents were the result of a poor choice of a person handling a powerful machine.
He was especially troubled by the accident that took place on March 8 when a bike along with its two teenage boys fell off a height of 40 meters from the U bridge in Bandra, resulting in the death of the 18-year-old boy riding pillion.