Bombay High Court: Deciding on the question whether the traffic police can arrest a person under Section 185 of the Motor Vehicles (MV) Act, a division bench of Hon’ble S.C. Dharmadhikari and G.S. Patel, JJ has ruled that the power to arrest without warrant in case of the offence punishable under Section 185 is only to enable a police officer to subject a person to the test specified in Sections 203 and 204 of the MV Act. In the present case, the traffic police stopped the applicant’s car and made her take a breath analyzer test. It was found that the applicant had consumed more than 30 ml of alcohol. She was then taken to the police station, where she had to pay Rs 2,000 and sign a bond to appear in the metropolitan court the next date.
The applicant had approached the high court to challenge the entire charge leveled against her under Section 185 is not cognizable ,and no first information report was registered in the case, hence here was no other proof other than the breath analyser report and the officer’s word that she was drunk at the time of the incident. The Court ruled that the drunk-driving tests conducted by the traffic police were correct and proper as per the law.. The Bench also rejected the applicant’s contention that subjecting oneself to the breath analyzer test is deprivation of life and liberty as these tests are provided to obtain a proof of a person being in such a state as could be termed as unfit to drive a motor vehicle. [Rani Shashank Doshi vs State of Maharashtra, Criminal Application No. 467 0f 2012, decided on 28th November, 2013]
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