Families of road crash victims protest Home’s decision to go soft on reckless driving
Families of road crash victims yesterday gathered at a press conference in the capital protesting the government’s initiative to exempt reckless drivers from death penalty.
Last Wednesday, Home Minister Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir pledged transport owners and workers that deaths by road accidents would henceforth be considered as “accidental deaths” and be tried under section 304(b) of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
As per the section, killing someone in a road crash is a bailable offence that amounts to five years’ imprisonment at best.
Shipping Minister Shajahan Khan and Communications Minister Obaidul Quader were present when the pledge was made.
Yesterday, in a Dhaka Reporter’s Unity hall jarringly plastered with smiling photographs of the loved ones lost in road accidents, the victim families expressed frustration at being denied justice.
The press briefing was jointly organised by Families United against Road Accidents, Saif Foundation, Poribesh Bachao Andolan, Work for a Better Bangladesh Trust, and Bangladesh Press and Human Rights Foundation.
During the briefing, the families observed that the home minister’s move undermined those who died in hit-and-run encounters. This would include cases where a driver ran over a person instead of stopping or fled the scene leaving the person hit to die; both tantamount to intended murder.
Samia Halim, mother of deceased Saif Ahmed Arnob, who was hit and run over by a covered van on the eve of Eid-ul-Azha in 2009 while he was coming home with sacrificial animal, expressed grave disappointment over the uncertainty of justice.
“The minister’s initiative will make it easier for perpetrators to get away. I have been fighting for justice for so long, only to get delayed more by people with vested interests,” said Saima, also chairperson of Saif Foundation, which advocates for safer roads.
Lawmaker Tarana Halim, also aunt of Saif, said such a provision allowed bail to reckless drivers and thus ensured them a way out.
“The assurance of a bail provision will further encourage people to drive recklessly,” she said adding that classifying all road crash fatalities as accidental deaths also meant no one would even investigate whether it was otherwise.
Mohammad Mahbub Hossain, teacher at Dhaka College, deplored the move saying that he was being denied justice for his two nephews and brother-in-law, who had died in two separate road crashes.
Abu Naser Khan, chairperson of Paribesh Bachao Andolan who lost a brother in a road accident, said such cases were treated with more negligence than those for other types of homicides.
The minister should enact a law that served the interest of mass people, not vested quarters, said Nazrul Islam, whose wife had been killed in a road accident.
Meanwhile, the home minister’s promise to transport owners and workers seems to have taken effect.
The case of yesterday’s road accident at Kamalapur was filed under section 304(b), Officer-in-Charge of Shahjahanpur Police Station Syed Ziaudding told The Daily Star.
In the accident, a minibus hit a rickshaw flinging its passenger Rokhsana Begum Laila to the ground. The minibus then ran over her.
“Laila left behind three children; the youngest is only five,” family sources told The Daily Star.
Courtesy of The Daily Star
