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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Hit-&-run Nanda plea on review

Hit-&-run Nanda plea on review

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published Published on Jan 11, 2012   modified Modified on Jan 11, 2012
-The Telegraph
 
BMW hit-and-run key accused Sanjeev Nanda, who is a free man now, today urged the Supreme Court not to use his case to settle the law on whether culpable homicide not amounting to murder or criminal negligence charges should be invoked in such cases.

Those accused in hit-and-run cases are routinely slapped with IPC Section 304A (causing death by negligence), which carries a maximum jail term of two years or a fine or both.

However, Delhi police had chargesheeted Nanda under Section 304 Part II (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) for killing six persons while driving rashly.

This carries a jail term of up to 10 years with a fine and could extend to life term in certain cases. Nanda was sentenced to a seven-year jail term in the lower court.

The trial court convicted him only on the basis of eyewitness evidence that Nanda was seen reversing his car after running over the victims.

This prompted the lower court to conclude that Nanda had caused the accident with the knowledge that his rash and negligent driving in a state of drunkenness was likely to cause death.

However, on appeal, the high court convicted him on the charge of causing death by negligence. His sentence was reduced to two years, the period already undergone by him.

Nanda, the high court said, knew that illegal consequences might follow his act, but hoped that they would not. This hope, the high court suggested, would take Nanda out of the ambit of IPC Section 304 Part II and put him under the purview of Section 304 A.

But since then, public outrage has spurred demands to make it mandatory for Section 304 Part II to be invoked in all such cases. The top court has issued a notice to the government in Nanda’s case asking it why culpable homicide not amounting to murder charges may not be invoked in all hit-and-run cases.

Nanda is apprehensive that he would come under the ambit of any Supreme Court ruling on this point. His lawyer, Ram Jethmalani, opposed the CBI’s appeal on the grounds of delay.

“This court can decide this issue of law in another pending case (the Alistair Pereira case), why in the case of this young man?” Jethmalani argued even as Nanda, the grandson of Admiral S.M. Nanda, watched from the sidelines in court.

The top court is yet to decide the case of Pereira who was convicted by Bombay High Court in another hit-and-run case in 2006.

He had run over and killed seven pavement dwellers and injured 14 others. In its September 6, 2007, order, the high court convicted Pereira for culpable homicide not amounting to murder and sentenced him to three years in jail and a fine of Rs 5 lakh.

He then filed an appeal in the apex court, where Justice Markandey Katju and Justice Gyan Sudha Mishra differed on the quantum of the sentence to be awarded to him.

Justice Katju felt the time Pereira spent in jail could be considered his sentence. However, Justice Mishra felt that the one-month he had spent in jail was inadequate given the gravity of his offence.

As a result the case was referred to a three-judge bench before which it is still pending.


The Telegraph, 11 January, 2012, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120111/jsp/nation/story_14991013.jsp


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