As Samik was getting ready to roll out his car from a parking lot on Hindusthan Road, a man in a sky blue shirt popped out of nowhere and demanded “`60, sir” as parking fees. Samik tried telling him that he was there only for two hours and should be charged only Rs 20; but the parking attendant was adamant, holding out a tiny printed slip on which the amount of `60 was visible. There was no way to deny a printed record but Samik smelled foul play. Being aware of the current parking fee under KMC area to be Rs 10 per hour, Samik scrutinized the printed slip. He checked the car number and time, both of which were correct. The time was 2 hours 3 minutes which would make up for `30 for the 3-hour slot, but then how could it have a rate of `20 per hour?
With the parking attendant standing confidently with the hand-held machine as a proof of authenticity and pressing the logic of "busy area with higher parking fees’’, Samik tried calling the Kolkata Police Control Room to garner some help. To his good fortune there was a traffic sergeant passing by whom Samik requested to stop. Inquiring about the parking rate, Samik produced the printed slip for the sergeant. Immediately the fraud was detected and the parking attendant was taken to the South East Traffic Guard.

The modus operandi of the crime knocked Samik back. The parking attendant had simply changed the ‘Vehicle Type’ from ‘Car or 4 Wheelers’ to ‘Bus/Lorry’ keeping the car number same. That’s it! With a higher parking rate for heavy vehicles, the parking slip gets changed to a `20 rate per hour which is presented to the helpless motorist to cheat him.
The traffic sergeant also conveyed other means of bluffing such as handing over the parking slip of some earlier parked car with a longer time or a vague receipt with a wrong number which the motorists fail to check.
Just as we were relieved that digital technology would take care of much of the pains that came with parking a car, we came to learn that we must tackle the digital ways to fleece!