Terming light sentences being awarded in road accident cases as “mockery of justice”, Supreme Court today asked lawmakers to scrutinise, re-look and re-visit the penal laws related to rash driving. The top court also said that the poor’s life was as worth living as that of the rich.
We are compelled to observe that India has a disreputable record of road accidents. There is a nonchalant attitude among the drivers. They feel that they are the ‘emperors’. Drunkenness contributes to careless driving where other people become their prey.
- Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Prafulla C Pant
The bench of justices also said, “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’.
“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 that they are bound to ask the lawmakers to scrutinise, re-look and re-visit the sentencing policy in Section 304A, IPC. “We say so with immense anguish,” the bench said.
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 reduced his jail term from one year to 24 days that he has 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.
“It is absolutely in the realm of misplaced sympathy,” it said.
The court observed that “such a crime blights not only the lives of the victims but of many others around them. It ultimately shatters the faith of the public in judicial system.”
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)