An Encounter with a Cheetah!

Nah, not of the four legged variety, but a two wheeled one :P Iam talking about the Patrol bikes of Police in Bangalore, they are called Cheetah and are also painted like cheetah. Well, I didn’t get on the wrong side of the law or any such thing, I just happened to get a closer look on one of the police Cheetahs today.

Me and my friend Girish (he’s a cop) were on our way to Whitefield, I wanted to do trial runs from home to Whitefield as my new office is situated there :P Wanted to get familiarized with the Potholes, road humps, danger zones etc from a biker’s point of view, which will facilitate me in getting in to “auto pilot” mode during my future home – office commutes (for few days till iam provided a cab) I wouldn’t want to be happily cruising in my comfort speed and spot an unexpected pothole or road hump at the last moment, I wanted the same kind of comfort level that I had for 5.5 years while commuting through Hosur Road to my earlier office. (Yeah, iam psychotic :P )

This was my second venture towards that route, I was getting familiarized with the N number of Road humps in Whitefield, made a mental note of those and was returning back home, when girish spotted one of his colleague on the Cheetah Patrol bike of Whitefield Police station. I stopped the bike and both the cop friends started talking. My attention turned towards this “mama” bike :P I had an excellent opportunity to get a deeper look at the various gizmos attached to it, so I started clicking few pics with my Phone Camera.



Then Girish’s Cop friend told me that I could take close up pics of the gizmos if I wanted to! So, I started clicking. The bike was of newer batch, it was a Pulsar 150 V3 (digital meter one) The standard fittings were the noticeable side box (to carry papers and the dreaded Fine book! :P) The two prominent Siren lights, a loud speaker, an amplifier for the sirens (with various modes in it) and a walkie talkie holder. The lathi is kept between the gap of sidebox, seat and footpeg.
I got curious as to how all these devices were mounted and started to take a closer look.



The Siren lights (2) are mounted on to a Bull bar type Crash guard on each side. The loudspeaker is connected is held by a small nut on the Starter motor! The Amplifier and Walkie talkie stand are made of metal and are fixed crudely between two rear view mirror mounting nuts! But they do their job though. The Amp is pretty heavy, but it sits steadily in this jugaad. The Amplifier is for the Siren Lights, the Amplifier has Volume control for the siren sound, different type of siren modes eg, Ambulance, fire, police! There’s even a microphone input for cops to plugin a microphone for announcements!



I was thinking that all these devices would have some additional battery as power source, I was surprised when the Cop told me that they all run on Pulsar’s stock 9 amps battery! I asked him then how does it handle the load, he told me that if they use the sirens a lot, then the battery goes kaput in a month or two and then they need to replace it! The cop also told that’s why they don’t use those sirens or speaker that much as it ends up killing the battery! I guess that’s why these devices are always a show piece in traffic as well as crime police vehicles.

I guess it’s the same story with older police bikes like the bullets. The cop also told me that now they are issuing Pulsar 180s and Apache 150s to crime as well as traffic departments. The day is not far when we are doing 80 -100 kmph in Ring road and we get pulled over by a traffic cop on a white Pulsar 200/220 for overspeeding!

It was time to move on, so i thanked the cop for letting me take the pics and patiently answering my queries and we both moved on towards home. Thanks to my friend Girish, I got a closer look at the cheetah from a biker’s point of view. Will try to get a closer view of police four wheeler Hoysala next time if I get a chance, but with out getting into it! :P