Police have slapped the charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder on the driver of the minibus that allegedly hit a motorcycle before turning on its side, leaving two persons dead and 17 injured, on Dufferin Road in central Kolkata on Saturday.
Sheikh Tousif, 36, who the police said was driving the bus when it met with the accident, was arrested at the Khanna crossing in north Kolkata on Sunday.
One of the two victims was 19-year-old Farhan Ahmed Khan, a resident of Dr Sudhir Bose Road in southwest Kolkata’s Watgunge. The other was Intajul Mondal, 57, from Nadia district.
“The 14-year-old minibus has 26 citation cases against it. The owner has yet to pay the fine for any of the cases. Besides, there are 71 traffic violation cases that are yet to be settled in court,” an officer said on Sunday.
The driver has been charged under Section 304 (Part II) of the IPC, which deals with culpable homicide not amounting to murder. He has also been charged with attempt to culpable homicide not amounting to murder, rash and negligent driving, mischief, and rash and negligent act endangering human life.
The maximum punishment under Section 304 (Part II) is 10 years’ imprisonment.
In most fatal road accident cases, the accused drivers are charged with rash and negligent driving and causing death due to negligence. The charges carry a maximum punishment of two years in jail.
As for Saturday’s accident, the police said that going by the nature of the crash, it was apparent the minibus was moving at a high speed, putting the lives of the passengers and people on the road at risk. The 17 people who were injured — 14 men and three women — were discharged from hospital after treatment. Among the injured was the person who was riding the bike.
The police said the bus would be subjected to a mechanical test to find out whether any glitch had caused the accident. The bus and the motorcycle will also undergo forensic tests for data on the speed of the vehicles just before the crash.
Calls from this newspaper to the owner of the bus — whose address in Nadial, in Metiabruz, is registered with the motor vehicles department — went unanswered.
A senior officer in the fatal squad of the traffic department said: “Stringent charges have been slapped on the driver because of reckless driving through a busy thoroughfare like Dufferin Road. That means the driver had full knowledge of the consequences of his actions.”
Another officer of the traffic department said Sector 304 has been applied only in a handful of road accident cases.
In 2017, actor Vikram Chatterjee had been charged under this section after a car driven by him crashed on Rashbehari Avenue in south Kolkata, resulting in the death of his co-passenger, actor and model Sonika Singh Chauhan.
