Enforcing new MVC regulations, traffic policemen randomly stopped the motorcyclist identified as Rakesh after they saw him riding without a mandatory helmet.
They asked him to take a breathalyser test and found that he was intoxicated. He registered as having a 0.20 percent (g/dL) blood alcohol content. The permissible limit is .03 percent.
Staring at the possibility of his motorcycle being impounded, Rakesh decided instead to set it on fire, prompting the police to arrest him. Later a case was registered against him, they added.
The incident went viral on social media, with netizens taking screenshots and joking about the incident.
One poetic Twitter user was even inspired to describe the incident in verse.
Rakesh claimed he had bought the bike for $209 and felt that a fine of $153 for not wearing a helmet and being drunk while driving was too steep.
According to the police, Rakesh was agreeable initially to having his vehicle impounded, but when informed about the new MVC laws, he became agitated and set it on fire to prevent it from being impounded.
Under the new rules, penalties have increased by up to ten times for some common traffic violations, like driving without a license and driving with a revoked license.
Since the introduction of the amended Motor Vehicles Act on 1 September, several Indian states have aggressively begun levying the fines for various traffic violations. One such incident involved an auto-rickshaw driver in the Indian state of Odisha. He was fined 47,500 Rupees (About $ 662) for flouting traffic rules.
In another incident, a resident of Delhi was fined 23,000 Rupees (about $321) by police in the Indian state of Haryana for a similar offence.