Noting that the lack of a strong deterrent had led to a nonchalant attitude among drivers, the Supreme Court on Monday urged Parliament to consider enhanced punishment for causing death due to rash and negligent driving.
A Bench of justices Dipak Misra and P.C. Pant said India has a poor record on road accidents. The court said drunkenness contributed to careless driving where other people become the ‘prey.’
“The poor feel that their lives are not safe, the pedestrians think of uncertainty and civilised persons drive in constant fear but still apprehensive about the obnoxious attitude of the people who project themselves as larger than life,” the court said.
“In such obtaining circumstances, we are bound to observe that lawmakers should scrutinise, re-look and re-visit the sentencing policy in Section 304A of the IPC. We say so with immense anguish,” said Justice Misra, who authored the judgment for the Bench.
Rash and negligent drivers, even those who cause death on the road, are booked under Section 304A that provides for a maximum of two years sentence with fine.
The court was hearing the case of Saurabh Bakshi, who was given a one-year imprisonment by a Patiala court for causing death of two persons on road but was let off by the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which reduced his sentence to 24 days in jail or the period that the convict had already undergone. The High Court reduced the sentence because the convict had already paid compensation to the kin of the victims.
The apex court said the High Court had been swayed by the passion of mercy in applying the principle that payment of compensation was a factor for reducing sentence.
“A man with the means has, in possibility, graduated himself to harbour the idea that he can escape from the substantive sentence by payment of compensation. Neither the law nor the court that implements the law should ever get oblivious of the fact that in such accidents precious lives are lost,” the court noted.
Allowing the appeal of the Punjab government against the High Court's reduction of sentence, the Bench said there are occasions when deterrence is an imperative necessity depending upon the facts of the case.
