A 17-year-old rich brat from Pune, heavily drunk, drives his father’s unregistered Porsche with no number plate and licence, at 160 kmph, kills two engineers on the spot by ramming his luxury car into them.
Worse, the young guy got bail within 15 hours of killing, that too on a Sunday. The Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) very surprisingly took a unthinkably lenient view by granted him bail, on condition that he should write a 300-word essay on the incident, directed parents to keep him away from ‘bad’ company, work with traffic police for 15 days, take de-addiction counselling, and the son of a very rich builder was free to leave.
Another shocker came the next day when his test reports claimed that he wasn’t drunk. Funnily, a video surfaced online of the night the accident took place, showing where the young brat was consuming alcohol in a pub with his friends.
Amid nationwide outrage, the Juvenile Justice Board later modified the order and sent him to the observation home.
The police have urged the Board for permission to try the teen accused – aged 17 years and eight months – as an adult due to the heinousness of the crime. The matter is currently being examined. The families of the two engineers are on the other hand crying for justice calling it ‘murder’ and seeking stringent punishment for the accused.
Two police officers were suspended for dereliction of duty, for delay in collecting the driver’s blood samples and case registration lapses.
There have been reports of an NCP (Ajit Pawar faction) MLA having visited the police station, where the teenager was taken after the accident, in the early hours of May 19.
Dr Ajay Tawade and Dr Hari Harnor from the Forensic Science Department of Pune’s Sasoon General Hospital were arrested by the Pune Crime Branch, for allegedly changing the blood sample. Pune Police Commissioner Amitesh Kumar told the media that samples collected at the hospital and sent for forensic tests were not of the juvenile accused, indicating that the sample was replaced.
All this makes one wonder about how law works differently for an ordinary law-abiding citizen and for someone with lots of money and influential friends in power. This also shows complete confidence of the offenders in the fact that the law and order machinery is too weak and won’t get to them.
Even worse is the conviction rates regarding road accidents. The share of completed court trials resulting in conviction for hit-and-run cases has remained below 50 per cent in two out of the previous five years. Maximum it raised to 58 %, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).
There is something very wrong in the way we deal with irresponsible driving, road safety and accidents. Citizens responding to the current case are flagging the equally tragic loss of life in an accident involving film actor Salman Khan in 2002. The case ended 13 years later with the accused being acquitted.
Not long ago, a similar outrage took place in Goa at Banastarim, in which all efforts were allegedly made by the accused to circumvent the law.
People have now forgotten about the case and they will forget about the Pune accident case as well, while more people will continue to get crushed under the wheels of a callous system and an irresponsible society, which is unable to get its act right.
The basic causes for miscarriage of justice in many cases are thearchaic judicial system, rampant corruption, a large number of inefficient and/or corrupt officials, questionable character of large numbers of political leaders and some questionable verdicts as in the case of JJB here.
It seems that money can buy even justice. Is this the society we need? Isn’t there a need of complete overhauling, top to bottom, but who will do it? Until that happens, innocent lives will continue to get crushed under the wheels of rogue drivers, and more homes will get wrecked.
