A local court, while upholding the order of a magisterial court to sentence a man to two years’ in prison for causing death by negligence, observed that police officials remained ”indifferent and insensitive” to the victim’s plight. The court directed that an order copy be sent to the police commissioner to fix responsibility of the erring officials and for taking appropriate remedial action.
The court was hearing a revision petition by Nitin Mehta, who was sentenced to two years’ simple imprisonment for causing the death of Harish Kumar in an accident on March 17, 2014. ”Therefore, the prosecution has been able to prove its case beyond all reasonable doubts against the appellant and therefore the present appeal so far as it impugns the judgment of conviction stands dismissed,” Additional Sessions Judge Anuj Agrawal said in a recent order.
Noting that Mehta did not help the victim after the accident, the court also rejected his plea to take a lenient view. ”Appellant is accordingly taken into custody for serving the sentence of imprisonment as awarded by the trial court…,” the court said. The judge said he was ”at pains to observe that despite the loss of a precious human life, the concerned police officials remained indifferent and insensitive to the plight of the victim and chose to report the matter (initially) as untraced despite ascertaining the identity of the offending vehicle as well as prosecution witness 1 (the eyewitness) on the date of the incident itself”. ”The accident might have been reported as untraced by the investigating agency but for the herculean efforts of a good Samaritan (the eyewitness) who left no stone unturned for bringing the actual culprit to book,” he added. He said the ”indolence of (the) investigating agency” was required to be brought to the notice of the higher officers of the city police. So ”a copy of the judgment was to be sent to the Commissioner of Police with a request to look into the matter, fix the responsibility of erring police officials, including the investigating officer and Station House Officer and to take appropriate remedial action under intimation to this court”, the judge said. Sarita Vihar police station had registered an FIR against Mehta and a magisterial court in May 2018 sentenced him to two years’ simple imprisonment under Section 304A (causing death by negligence) of the Indian Penal Code and six months’ simple imprisonment months under Section 279 (rash driving or riding on public way).
Both sentences will run concurrently, the magisterial court had said. According to the witness statement, Mehta’s car hit the victim’s motorcycle while descending from the Sarita Vihar flyover. Mehta also kept dragging the victim for some distance after hitting him.
He then fled the spot, the witness said.
