Imagine receiving a traffic challan for a violation you did not commit, on a road you never drove on. For several Hyderabad residents, this is not a hypothetical — it is exactly what has been, reportedly, happening to them, as a growing number of cases reveal a brazen number plate cloning racket across the city.
The scam works simply. Offenders copy the registration number of a legitimately owned vehicle onto their own, then proceed to break traffic rules with impunity. Every time an automated camera captures a violation, the fine lands in the inbox of the innocent owner — not the actual offender.
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In one case reported by The Indian Express, Mohd Rafiuddin, a resident of Kurmaguda, Madannapet, was arrested after his tampered two-wheeler number caused traffic challans to be wrongly issued to the original vehicle owner, Shaheen Begum of Old Malakpet.
Joint Commissioner (Traffic) Joel Davis stated that the accused's use of the tampered plate resulted in 23 traffic challans being wrongly issued to the legitimate owner.
In another case reported by Indian Express, a woman identified only as A. Lakshmi of Kukatpally began receiving repeated challans for violations she never committed. Police later found the culprits — Shaik Abbu Baba, 41, and his son Shaik Rihaan, 19 — had tampered with their motorcycle's registration number to closely mimic hers, enabling them to mislead enforcement authorities and avoid paying fines.
The schemes are growing in sophistication. In Jubilee Hills, a drunk BMW driver was caught using remote-operated Chinese-made flip number plates — a system installed in his car that could change the displayed registration number at the press of a button near the steering wheel, the report said.
The scale of the broader problem is significant. As per the report, in just the first 10 months of 2025, Hyderabad traffic police issued more than 36,000 "erroneous" challans, with thousands more complaints recorded by Cyberabad and Rachakonda police.
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Police say technology is fighting back. ANPR cameras tracked the same registration number across multiple locations simultaneously, flagging the impossibility and exposing a cloned identity — a detection that officers say would have been nearly impossible through manual checks alone.
Hyderabad Traffic Police have cautioned that such tampering is a punishable offence and urged residents to report suspected misuse through the e-Challan portal or their WhatsApp helpdesk at 8712661690.
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