In one more incident of hit-and-run case after Salman Khan Verdict, court has acted in favor of the accused, leaving victims hoping for justice. On Thursday, Janhavi Gadkar, an accused in a hit-and-run drunken driving case has been returned her driving license with her car. This in-house lawyer of Reliance Industries was out on bail since August.
Janhavi was involved in a hit-and-run drunken driving case on the Eastern Freeway, Mumbai in which two people were killed when she slammed her Audi Q3 in a taxi, this incident took place on 10th June.
Janhavi was arrested under rash driving and ‘culpable homicide not amounting to murder’. It is said that a charge sheet of 560 pages with the statements o 57 witnesses was filed in the case against her, after which the Wadala RTO sealed her car and cancelled her license. As per the police, she has also been involved in a similar type of accident however she settled that case mutually with the victim.
She was granted bail after spending 57 days in jail and her lawyer was Amit Desai (the lawyer who managed to get bail for Salman Khan on the same day of his conviction). Police strongly opposed her bail citing the reason that by her previous records there is a strong probability that she might repeat the crime. Sanjay Patil, the Session court judge observed, ‘Gadkar is a woman and, hence, the case needs to be dealt with differently.’
Janhavi appealed against the RTO’s decision of suspending her license, she got the decision in her favor as the court feels, ‘principals of natural justice were not followed before suspending the license’. The court went one step further by giving the order of returning her car also.
Nearly 370 people die daily in road accidents in India, are we doing enough to control drunken driving or hit-and-run cases. Leaving a repeated offender free is definitely bringing other’s safety in question.
Don’t you feel that courts should be harsher towards the rule breakers?