Karnataka high court reduces driver’s jail term to 1 day from 1 year for rushing accident victim to hospital

Bengaluru: The Karnataka high court has reduced a one-year jail term of a driver to one day of simple imprisonment in an accident case, considering he had shifted the victim to a hospital immediately after the incident.

In its April 28 order, the high court, however, directed Riyaz Ahmed to pay Rs 1 lakh in enhanced compensation, in equal installments in May and June, to the wife and son of Anand Shetty, who died following the accident.

Shetty was crossing the Mangaluru-Udupi highway near Beach Cross Road in Surathkal police station limits on July 15, 2015, when the car driven by Ahmed hit him. Ahmed immediately shifted a seriously injured Shetty to a hospital in his car, but he succumbed to his injuries the next day.

In 2017, a trial court held Ahmed guilty of causing death by negligence and imposed one-year simple imprisonment with a Rs 5,000 fine, payable to the dependants of the deceased. In 2018, the Mangaluru sessions court confirmed the order and Ahmed moved the high court.

His legal team told the court that he had met with an accident and had a rod implanted in his right leg. It emphasised that because of the accident, he had lost his job as a driver.

Considering the details and the fact that Ahmed had shifted Shetty to hospital after the accident in his car and his willingness to pay enhanced compensation, Justice V Srishananda noted that justice would be met if the conviction is upheld and the sentence is reduced to one-day simple imprisonment along with enhancement of the compensation amount to Rs 1 lakh to be equally paid to Sumathi and Santhosh, wife and son, respectively, of the deceased Anand Shetty.