Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Nov 19: Chief Judicial Magistrate Reasi Kamlesh Pandita today rejected the bail application of one Manoj, a conductor of bus which met with accident at Jyotipuram killing 24 persons.
While rejecting the bail application, the court observed, “the allegation against the accused is not that fatal accident occurred due to negligence of the accused persons but due to their knowledge that their criminal act is likely to cause death to the passengers”.
“Neither the driver or the conductor was on the wheels nor had controlled the bus properly on a very accidental prone place and due to the greed for short cut earning by loading more and more passengers beyond the permissible capacity of the passengers of the bus the accident took place claiming 24 precious lives”, the court said.
“The allegations against accused persons are very serious. The exceptions to the grant of bail are gravity of the offences, its impact on the public at large etc. In this case, public interest would not be served by bailing out the accused person at this stage and also this stage is not amenable to analysis as to whether the culpable homicide not amounting to murder charge, is made out against the accused persons or not”, the court said, adding “prima facie, facts and circumstances lead to the limited conclusion that heinous offence has been committed by accused person, which offence is still lurking in the minds of local populace”.
The CJM said, “more people die of road accidents than by most diseases so much, so the Indian highways are among the top killers of the country. It looks as if traffic regulations are virtually dead and police checking mostly absent”.
“By these processes of lawlessness, public roads are now lurking death traps. The State must rise to the gravity of the situation and provide road safety measures through active police presence beyond frozen indifference, through mobilization of popular organizations in field of road safety, frightening publicity for gruesome accidents and promotion of strict driving licensing and rigorous vehicle invigilation, lest human life should hardly have a chance for highway use”, the court said.
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel