The 17:40 Report and the 200-Member Group
At 17:40 a traffic constable at the Sector 17 crossing must email his daily report to the SHO before 18:00. He has typed this sentence: 'The vehicle was seized and the driver was challaned, he has no licence since 2019 and was drivng rashly and also he argued with the officer.' He also has a small spreadsheet of challans: Monday 14, Tuesday 9, Wednesday 17, Thursday 0, Friday 22, Saturday 31. A colleague suggests sending the report, the driver's photograph and his licence number to a 200-member WhatsApp group of traffic staff so that 'everyone knows the vehicle'. The SHO wants the subject line to carry the date and the post, and wants the report to be readable in court if it is ever called for.
1. Rewrite the sentence as it should appear in the report, and explain each change you made.
Read the worked answer
Rewrite: 'The vehicle was seized and the driver was challaned. He has held no driving licence since 2019, was driving rashly, and argued with the officer when stopped.'
Changes and reasons:
- The comma splice ('challaned, he has...') becomes a full stop; two independent statements should not hang off one comma in a record that may be read in court.
- 'has no licence since 2019' is the wrong tense with since: use 'has held no licence since 2019' or 'has not held a licence since 2019'.
- 'drivng' is a typo; run a spell-check before sending.
- 'and also he argued' is redundant and breaks parallel structure; 'was driving rashly, and argued' keeps the verbs parallel.
- 'challaned' is accepted departmental usage and may stay, but the tone should be neutral. If the officer's rank and the time are known, name them, because the record must identify who was obstructed.
2. Give the spreadsheet formulas, compute the total and average, and explain how a common error would distort the figure.
Read the worked answer
Cells B2 to B7 hold 14, 9, 17, 0, 22, 31.
- Total:
=SUM(B2:B7)→ 93. - Average:
=AVERAGE(B2:B7)→ 15.5, i.e. 93 ÷ 6. - Equivalent:
=SUM(B2:B7)/COUNT(B2:B7).
Two common errors distort this. If Thursday's zero is left blank instead of typed as 0, AVERAGE ignores blank cells and computes 93 ÷ 5 = 18.6 - the average rises by three challans a day without a single extra challan. If a formula is written by hand as =SUM(B2:B7)/5, the same 18.6 appears for the opposite reason. State the day count in the report: '93 challans in 6 days, average 15.5'. If the SHO wants the average for working days only, that is a different figure (93 ÷ 5 = 18.6, Thursday being nil) and must be labelled as such, not slipped in.
3. Advise on the WhatsApp suggestion. What should be done instead?
Read the worked answer
Do not send it. A 200-member WhatsApp group is not a police record system: membership cannot be verified, the photograph and licence number of a person not convicted are personal data, and forwarding is irreversible. Once forwarded, the constable has published the data and cannot get it back.
The correct handling:
- Keep the photograph and licence details in the case file and, if needed, on the official system with access limited to investigating staff.
- Email the report to the SHO as an attachment over the official mail, with the subject carrying the date and the post, e.g. 'Daily challan report - Sector 17 traffic post - 12 May'.
- If a group alert is genuinely required, use the departmental broadcast channel or the control room, minimise the data (vehicle number only, no photograph), and use BCC for email to multiple recipients so addresses are not exposed.
- Name attachments sensibly (post_date) and check the recipient before sending; a misdirected report cannot be recalled.