New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Centre to consider amending the Indian Penal Code and the Motor Vehicles Act to ensure harsher punishment in cases of deaths caused due to rash and negligent driving.
A Bench comprising Justices Dipaki Misr and C. Nagappan asked Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi to impress upon the Centre to re-look into IPC Section 304-A (causing death due to negligence) which provides for up to two years imprisonment.
The Bench said the government should also review Section 184 of the Motor Vehicles Act under which fines are imposed for dangerous driving including using mobile phones.
The Bench, while hearing a special leave petition related to a road accident death, expressed its anguish about the nonchalant attitude of rash, and unrepentant, drivers.
The Bench stated: “This court is concerned about vehicular accidents that extinguish the life-spark of many because of the whim and fancy, adventurism and harbouring of the notion by those at the wheel that they are ‘larger than life’.”
“It is common knowledge that drivers drive because of their profession but there are individuals who drive because of their uncontrolled propensity for adventure. They really do not care for the lives of others. It can be stated with certitude that the number of vehicles in the country has increased in a geometrical manner and the people are in a competition to pick up speed,” the bench said. The court expressed concern over the number of vehicular accidents taking place in this country and how lakhs of people died or were left permanently disabled because of the rash attitude of drivers.
The Bench was of the opinion that the punishment provided under Section 304-A of the IPC was inadequate in the modern context. The attorney general submitted on Wednesday that IPC Section 304-A also covered deaths by negligence and thus providing higher punishment might not be justifiable under the Section.
