Snehal Upadhyay-
A plea was brought to the Supreme Court for giving orders to the Centre as well as Union Territories for making road accidents a non-bailable offence.
As there have been a lot of road accidents, this move would create apprehension and fear in the mind of drivers, which adversely stop them from being negligent while driving.
The plea also prays for the reduction in the number of vehicles on roads by restricting people from buying more than two vehicles in a family.
Also Read: Car accidents caused by Negligence
The plea is moved by Shrikant Prasad. Mentioning the reference from the information and documents obtained from the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, portals and RTI applications of the year 2019, around 67% of the accidents have occurred due to overspeeding and rash-negligent driving.
“The Government is finding the vaccine to curb deaths due to pandemic and rightly so, but what about the vaccine to curb lakhs of innocent deaths each year due to negligence of others. Due to the present “lenient sentencing” under Section 304-A (provides for a maximum of two years imprisonment, or with fine, or with both), we have seen that convicts invariably get even more leniency or no jail at all and get away with only fine”, stated Shrikant.
Hence, the plea recommends for amendment in Section 304A of the Indian Penal Code in order to make the offence of rash and negligent driving non-bailable.