A Delhi court has upheld the conviction and two-month jail term of a man whose speeding SUV struck and killed two pedestrians outside Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in 2021, observing that motorists have a responsibility towards everyone sharing the road. Additional Sessions Judge Saurabh Partap Singh Laler dismissed an appeal filed by Dalip Kumar against his conviction and sentence, holding that the punishment imposed by the trial court was already lenient considering that two people had lost their lives.
Kumar had been sentenced by a magistrate in February to two months in jail for causing death by negligence under Section 304A of the Indian Penal Code. He was also given 15 days' imprisonment for rash driving under Section 279.
‘Right to reach the other side alive’
In its August 17 judgment, the sessions court placed particular emphasis on the responsibility motorists owe to pedestrians. “A road is a shared inheritance,” the court said, adding that even a pedestrian crossing a street at midnight outside a hospital is entitled to expect reasonable conduct from those behind the wheel. The law intervenes when that expectation is violated not for vengeance, the judge observed, but to uphold the “ordinary human right” of a pedestrian to cross a road and reach the other side alive.
The court said the circumstances of the collision demonstrated more than a momentary error of judgment. Driving past the entrance of a hospital at such a speed that pedestrians could not be avoided amounted to “indifference to consequences”, it observed.
Two pedestrians killed outside RML
The case arose from an accident shortly after midnight on July 27, 2021, outside Gate No. 4 of RML Hospital. According to the prosecution, Kumar was driving an SUV at very high speed when he hit Meena Bhandari and Rajan as they were crossing the road. Both pedestrians died following the collision.
Kumar did not stop to assist the victims or alert police after the crash and instead fled the scene, according to the prosecution. The sessions court said CCTV footage captured the severity of the collision, while eyewitness testimony supported the prosecution's account of how the accident occurred.
Court rejects plea for lesser punishment
Kumar did not secure relief on the basis of his family circumstances either. In his appeal, he sought a reduction in sentence on the ground that he was the sole earning member of his family and had a wife and six minor children to support.
The court acknowledged the argument but found it insufficient to justify further reducing a sentence that it considered to be at the lower end of the scale. “To reduce further a sentence already at the lower end would be to make the punishment bear no proportion whatsoever to the harm caused,” it said. The judge noted that the consequences of Kumar's rash and negligent driving were irreversible, with two lives lost in the incident.
Witness challenge dismissed
The court also rejected Kumar's contention that prosecution witnesses had been “planted”. It noted that the eyewitnesses were members of the public and had no connection with police, finding no basis to discredit their accounts merely on the allegations raised by the convict. With the appeal dismissed, the court withdrew the suspension of Kumar's sentence and directed that he be taken into custody immediately to serve the jail term imposed on him.