By Dr Swati Jindal Garg
Proving once again that justice might get delayed, but is never denied, an insurance company has been directed by the Motor Accident Claim Tribunal (MACT) to pay Rs 1.98 crore compensation to the parents of a 32-year-old man who was killed in a hit-and-run involving a minor in 2016.
The MACT directed the company to pay the amount, constituting Rs 1.21 crore as compensation and around Rs 77.61 lakh as interest, to the parents of Sidharth Sharma who died after being hit by a Mercedes driven by a minor in Civil Lines in Delhi on April 4, 2016. The fatal crash was recorded by a security camera where Sidharth is seen trying to cross the road while looking both ways. He had just bought takeout from a noodles stand and was heading home when he was hit by the speeding car despite trying to get out of the way. After hitting him, the Mercedes went over a pavement and came to a stop as its front tyres burst. The teenager then fled with his friends. As per the detailed accident report filed by the police, the minor was driving the car rashly at such a high speed that after the collision, Sidharth was thrown 20 feet high into the air.
The Tribunal observed that the accused’s father, Manoj Aggarwal, willfully cultivated the illegal behaviour of his son by ignoring the cost of fellow road users. Hence, the Tribunal also held the father responsible for failing to stop his minor son from driving. “Instead of preventing his minor son from driving a Mercedes, he chose to ignore the same, which implies tacit consent on his part. The very fact that at the time of the accident he was at home was all the more reason to stop his son from taking the car from the home for a joy ride,” the Tribunal said in its order. Shockingly, the Delhi police chargesheet stated that despite the teenager being challaned earlier also for driving without a license and causing a similar accident, his father was careless and did not stop him.
Directing the insurance company to pay the compensation within 30 days, the Tribunal dismissed a plea by the father seeking exoneration of liability and granted the insurance company the liberty to recover the compensation amount from the father’s company, under which the vehicle was registered.
Earlier this year, the apex court held that the 17-year-old would not go to jail for his crime as the act of the accused, a juvenile, did not fall within the category of “heinous offences” under the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015 (JJ Act). Shilpa Sharma, the sister of Siddharth Sharma, had said then that she was devastated by the ruling, but would continue her fight for justice. “The judges said that there is a flaw in the law, but decided to not make the changes and directed the legislators to make the changes. They had the power to change it but they chose not to,” she reportedly said.
The Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act says that a juvenile can be tried as an adult in cases of “heinous” offences where the minimum punishment is seven years in jail. The Juvenile Justice Board ruled that the accused was fit to be tried as an adult, making him the first juvenile who would be tried thus after the government amended the law. In its five-page order, the Board observed that the young man was aware of the consequences of his actions and was in “no manner lacking in mental and physical capacity to commit the offence”. A Delhi Sessions court had upheld the ruling, but the Delhi High Court decided against the order. This was challenged by Shilpa in the Supreme Court, where the bench of Justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose noted that the offence of culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Section 304 of the IPC under which the juvenile was charged did not prescribe a minimum punishment period, but only a maximum punishment of life imprisonment or imprisonment up to ten years. Hence, it did not fall within the definition of “heinous offences” under Section 2(33) of the JJ Act as per which heinous offences are those for which the minimum punishment under the IPC or any other law is imprisonment for seven years or more.
The bench also noted that the law does not deal with a fourth category of offences, such as in this case. These are offences where the maximum sentence is more than seven years’ imprisonment, but no minimum sentence is prescribed. The Court also urged Parliament to address this loophole till which time such offences will be treated as “serious offences” under the JJ Act. “…an offence which does not provide a minimum sentence of seven years cannot be treated to be an heinous offence. However, in view of what we have held above, the Act does not deal with the 4th category of offences viz., offence where the maximum sentence is more than seven years imprisonment, but no minimum sentence or minimum sentence of less than seven years is provided, shall be treated as ‘serious offences’ within the meaning of the Act and dealt with accordingly till the Parliament takes the call on the matter”, the Court order said. It also held that for an offence to be a heinous offence, a mandatory minimum punishment has to be there. So any offence which does not prescribe that mandatory minimum will fall into the category of “serious offences”. The Court further made it clear that it could not rewrite the law and that the Act had to be read in the best interests of children and not otherwise.
In the past decade alone, India has witnessed a series of shocking hit-and-run cases by juveniles. All of them were characterised by drivers fleeing the scene immediately after the accident that not only claimed lives, but also raised glaring questions about road safety.
The latest case was the Porsche one where a 17-year-old boy from Pune collided with a motorcycle, killing two persons. According to the police, the juvenile was reportedly intoxicated at the time of the incident. What has shocked the nation was that the boy was initially granted bail in less than 15 hours of the incident by the Juvenile Justice Board and asked him to work with the Yerwada traffic police for 15 days and write an essay on the incident.
The incident came to light when a friend of the deceased filed an FIR. The victims, both 24-year-old software engineers from Madhya Pradesh working in Pune, were identified as Aneesh Awadhiya and Ashwini Koshta. It was Awadhiya’s friend who lodged an FIR at the Yerwada police station. On investigation, it was revealed that the Porsche was travelling at an estimated speed of 160 km/hr when it crashed into the victims’ motorcycle.
The anger that erupted over the Porsche case had not even settled when another case of a similar nature came to light in Kanpur. A teenager, a son of a prominent doctor, allegedly rammed his father’s car into two persons and killed them. He was sent to the juvenile home after a case was registered against him under Section 304A of the IPC stating that a car was involved in a hit-and-run incident. Post the registration of the case, the accused was detained and produced before the Juvenile Justice Board which sent him to a correctional centre.
Curiously, in this case too, it was found that the teenager was involved in another hit-and-run case, where he had injured four persons in Kanpur’s Barra area. It is being alleged that the accused was allowed to roam free despite these cases. The father, too, was booked. Action will be taken against the officers in charge of the previous case for not filing a chargesheet in the matter, the ACP reportedly said.
Despite the government endeavouring to enact stringent laws in order to ensure that the perpetrators are apprehended, it seems that we are still a long way from it. The latest regime of hit-and-run laws has introduced stringent penalties, including up to 10 years’ imprisonment and a fine of Rs 7 lakh for drivers responsible for fatal accidents who attempt to flee the scene.
The proactive steps being taken by courts will hopefully pave the way to a better and more guarded system. A lot needs to be understood by affluent parents who seem to think that money will be the answer to all ailments. With the spurt in such cases and social media playing the role of whistleblower, hiding everything under the cloak of power and money will become more difficult.
However, while the intent behind the latest amendments, including those made to the JJ Act are correct, its application needs a lot of work and the entire system will need to be pulled up from the grassroots level in order to apply laws in letter and spirit.
—The writer is an Advocate-on-Record practicing in the Supreme Court, Delhi High Court and all district courts and tribunals in Delhi