THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Dimple Grace Thomas, a Malayali nurse permanently settled in Melbourne, has been sentenced to two-and-a-half year’s imprisonment there after being held responsible for a vehicle accident in Melbourne last year that caused the death of an inborn child. She will get the parole only after serving 15 months in jail and after that she is most likely to be deported to India. Reports say that Ms Thomas, 31, a native of Kannur, accidentally rammed her car in to a car driven by Ashlea Allen, an Australian, who lost her 28-week old unborn child on August 8 last year. She reportedly drove on a one-way stretch of the South Gippsland Highway to avoid traffic and ignored the ‘must turn left’ sign board while driving and instead took the middle lane when the Australian woman was coming from the opposite direction resulting in the crash.
The seat belt on Ashlea got tightened causing extreme discomfort to the pregnant mother. The local hospital authorities performed an emergency caesarean where baby Milarniah was born but the impact of the accident resulted in the death of the baby after two days. The Victoria police major collision investigation unit investigated the crash and charged Ms Thomas with dangerous driving causing death, reckless conduct endangering serious injury and careless driving.
Ms Thomas had argued that she was not aware that the road was one-way as she was not fluent in English but the court observed that she was educated in English and had also given an interview in Australia in English. According to the Malayalam news division under the Special Broadcasting Service, Australia, Ms Thomas was also pregnant at the time of the accident and a miscarriage later.
“A permanent resident of can be deported to his or her home land if they are sentenced to imprisonment for more than a year as per Australia laws. Despite Ms Thomas’s lawyer pleading before the court to minimise her imprisonment, the Judge was not lenient,” reports SBS Malayalam. It was in 2012 Dimple and her family had immigrated to Australia with her husband. The couple’s three-year-old son was also there to witness the case proceedings. Now the family is relying on Australian minister for immigration and border protection’s intervention to cancel the deportation threat being posed on her.
