A Tale of Two Road Accidents

Road accidents are an unfortunate fact of life. The best we as a society can do is to minimize the chances of an accident. And when the “accident” is due to gross negligence, then the criminal should be so severely punished that it deters others from being negligent.

I read about an accident in Pune in which two people on a bike were mowed down by a speeding car a couple of days ago. The car was a Porsche (pictured above), driven by an apparently drunk 17-year old. The victims were both 24 year old, Ashwini Koshta and Aneesh Awadhiya, from Jabalpur. They had studied engineering in Pune and were working at Johnson Controls as data analysts.

Drunken driving is unfortunately not rare. Even underage drinking and driving is not rare either. What sets this one apart is the response of the law enforcement institutions. Two people senselessly killed — indeed murdered — in the prime of their lives by a criminal act. What was the outcome? Well, here’s the punishment that some judge imposed on the criminal:

Bail granted in 14 hours! I guess the judge wanted to go faster than a speeding sports car. Alright, it’s good the justice system does something this fast. But the conditions of the bail boggles the mind. Click on the image above for the details.

The bail conditions would be fair if the case involved underage drinking and a barroom brawl in which someone is knocked unconscious. But for the wanton killing of two people? That’s a pathetic, cruel joke.

Apparently the criminal 17-year old is the son of builder in Pune — which means that the father is rich and can afford to pay off the judge(s).

What would I have done if I was a witness to this accident? I’m being perfectly honest here. I would have dragged the criminal out of his car and beaten him black and blue, broken all his bones and made him suffer without snuffing the life out of him. With the help of other outraged people on the street, I would have made sure that he needs hospitalization and a lifetime of physio-therapy confined to a wheelchair, that he never can drive a car or have a drink.

Killing two innocents just to have a bit of fun must have consequences. And the consequence should not be that of writing an essay. That’s outrageous.

Justice will be served to some degree if the parents of the criminal are taken to court and stripped of all their assets and the proceeds given to the parents of the two murdered victims.

But the rich get away with murder in third rate countries. The judges are easily bribed. The Pune builder is probably worth a few hundred crores (many million dollars), and he can easily buy the judges for a few crores at most.

So what should the people do? Find the judge and make sure that he or she spends the rest of his or her miserable life in a wheelchair.

I am outraged. There was an incident some years back when a Bombay movie actor killed a bunch of people who were sleeping on the sidewalk by driving his fancy imported car. He should have been made an example of and thrown in jail for life. But no; not in India.

***

“Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen.” That was noted by the English statesman George Savile (1633 – 1695), the 1st Marquis of Halifax.

It’s time to hang drunken drivers who kill — so that people will stop their drunken-driving killing.

***

That  brought to mind an incident in Charles Dickens’ historical novel “A Tale of Two Cities” published in 1859, set in Paris before and during the French Revolution.[1]

I had read the novel in high school. I can still recall the incident as if I had been an eye witness to it.

The scene takes place in the streets of Paris during the time leading up to the French Revolution. A wine cask breaks and spills its contents into the street. The starving peasants desperately try to soak up every drop of the precious liquid using any containers or rags they can find.

An aristocrat in his carriage attempts to plow through the crowd. Tragically, a young child is struck by the carriage and killed.

Here’s Dickens:

A tall man in a nightcap had caught up a bundle from among the feet of the horses, and had laid it on the basement of the fountain, and was down in the mud and wet, howling over it like a wild animal.

“Pardon, Monsieur the Marquis!” said a ragged and submissive man, “it is a child.”

“Why does he make that abominable noise? Is it his child?”

“Excuse me, Monsieur the Marquis—it is a pity—yes.”

The fountain was a little removed; for the street opened, where it was, into a space some ten or twelve yards square. As the tall man suddenly got up from the ground, and came running at the carriage, Monsieur the Marquis clapped his hand for an instant on his sword-hilt.

“Killed!” shrieked the man, in wild desperation, extending both arms at their length above his head, and staring at him. “Dead!”

The people closed round, and looked at Monsieur the Marquis. There was nothing revealed by the many eyes that looked at him but watchfulness and eagerness; there was no visible menacing or anger. Neither did the people say anything; after the first cry, they had been silent, and they remained so. The voice of the submissive man who had spoken, was flat and tame in its extreme submission. Monsieur the Marquis ran his eyes over them all, as if they had been mere rats come out of their holes.

He took out his purse.

“It is extraordinary to me,” said he, “that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is for ever in the way. How do I know what injury you have done my horses. See! Give him that.”

He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and all the heads craned forward that all the eyes might look down at it as it fell. The tall man called out again with a most unearthly cry, “Dead!”

He was arrested by the quick arrival of another man, for whom the rest made way. On seeing him, the miserable creature fell upon his shoulder, sobbing and crying, and pointing to the fountain, where some women were stooping over the motionless bundle, and moving gently about it. They were as silent, however, as the men.

“I know all, I know all,” said the last comer. “Be a brave man, my Gaspard! It is better for the poor little plaything to die so, than to live. It has died in a moment without pain. Could it have lived an hour as happily?”

“You are a philosopher, you there,” said the Marquis, smiling. “How do they call you?”

“They call me Defarge.”

“Of what trade?”

“Monsieur the Marquis, vendor of wine.”

“Pick up that, philosopher and vendor of wine,” said the Marquis, throwing him another gold coin, “and spend it as you will. The horses there; are they right?”

Without deigning to look at the assemblage a second time, Monsieur the Marquis leaned back in his seat, and was just being driven away with the air of a gentleman who had accidentally broke some common thing, and had paid for it, and could afford to pay for it; when his ease was suddenly disturbed by a coin flying into his carriage, and ringing on its floor.

“Hold!” said Monsieur the Marquis. “Hold the horses! Who threw that?”

He looked to the spot where Defarge the vendor of wine had stood, a moment before; but the wretched father was grovelling on his face on the pavement in that spot, and the figure that stood beside him was the figure of a dark stout woman, knitting.

“You dogs!” said the Marquis, but smoothly, and with an unchanged front, except as to the spots on his nose: “I would ride over any of you very willingly, and exterminate you from the earth. If I knew which rascal threw at the carriage, and if that brigand were sufficiently near it, he should be crushed under the wheels.”

The dark, stout woman who was knitting is Madame Defarge. She knitted the names of the enemies of the people.

The Marquis departs for his chateau. The next morning, he is found dead in his fancy bed in his fancy bedroom. He’s been stabbed to death and attached to the hilt of the knife through his heart a note that read:

“Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques.”

The Marquis got his due from the father of the murdered child. The rich criminals in India don’t get their due. I would do what Jacques did if it were my child.

NOTES:

[1] I have to note in passing that Dickens was a xenophobe, racist and held fairly despicable views about non-European peoples. But he is celebrated as a novelist.