SC irked over road accidents, asks lawmakers to re-visit law

NEW DELHI:
Irked over light sentences being awarded in road accident cases, Supreme Court today said India had a “disreputable record” in this regard and asked lawmakers to “scrutinise, re-look and re-visit” the penal laws.
“We are compelled to observe that India has a disreputable record of road accidents. There is a non-challant attitude among the drivers. They feel that they are the ‘Emperors’ of all they survey. Drunkenness contributes to careless driving where other people become their prey.
“The poor feel that their lives are not safe, the pedestrians think of uncertainty and the civilised persons drive in constant fear but still apprehensive about the obnoxious attitude of the people who project themselves as ‘larger than life’,” a bench of justices Dipak Misra and Prafulla C Pant said.
“Life to the poor or the impecunious is as worth living for as it is to rich and the luxuriously temperamental…,” the bench said, adding, “we are bound to observe that the lawmakers should scrutinize, re-look and re-visit the sentencing policy in Section 304A, IPC. We say so with immense anguish.”
Section 304A of the IPC deals with the offence of causing death by rash and negligent act and provides for imprisonment for maximum of two years or fine or both.
The observations came in a verdict on an appeal filed by the State Government against the order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court in a road accident case in which two persons were killed on June 14, 2007.
The High Court had partly allowed the plea of convict Saurabh Bakshi and reduced his jail term from one year to 24 days, already undergone during the trial.
“In our opinion, it is a fit case where we are constrained to say that the High Court has been swayed away by the passion of mercy in applying the principle that payment of compensation is a factor for reduction of sentence to 24 days. It is absolutely in the realm of misplaced sympathy,” it said.
The apex court awarded six months jail term to the convict and asked him to surrender “forthwith”. (AGENCIES)

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