This month, India’s people faced another tragedy, another unjust story that took place on May 18, 2025, when a shiny Toyota Fortuner SUV hit three motorcyclists, which led to the death of one innocent life of an ordinary common man, a painter named Ravi from Dholabhata in Ajmer, with massive injuries to the other four people.
Now the question is, who was driving the Fortuner? It was indeed a man who was already under the pending challans for speeding, a careless human who was not in his senses due to overconsumption of alcohol, whose name is Digvijay Singh Chauhan. He works as a sevadar for the Khatu Shyam Mandir. Because of this brutal or perhaps careless murder attempt, he has been taken under arrest, with the hope that justice will prevail for violating human rights in India.
The hope for effective decision-making is a hard-earned goal for India, due to power or political influence, yet not an impossible dream to conquer.
When History Learned to Scream:
These people have witnessed the ruling of elites not just in the political systems but also on the roads, the roads which were supposed to be a place for people of all caste and creed, are killed mercilessly with no fear from the system. How can one forget the famous incident back in 1999, when the grandson of the Naval Chief Admiral S.M. Nanda killed six people with his luxurious BMW, around 2:00 am, and what justice did the law provide? Only a five-year sentence, which he didn’t even fully complete in prison, as he got bailed out soon.
That's not all, our all-time favourite Salman Khan, the Bollywood celebrity, ran his car over homeless men on a Bandra street in 2002, and the same pattern was observed in this incident as well, when the Bombay High Court gave him bail, leaving Mehboob Sharif, who died because of Salman’s poor driving skills, in hopelessness.
However, the most sarcastic incident is yet to be discussed, which is of the Pune Porsche case, when a 17-year-old kid ran over his car on two girls named Aneesh Awadhiya and Ashwini Koshta, who were given a task of writing an essay on traffic rules and safety, in compensation for the murder of two girls.
This created a justified outrage in the public, which forced the lawmakers to take the father into custody, as he should have, for letting an underage driver drive a car openly.
The Victims are Always on the Same Side:
The world has always lived in capitalism; it is not just a theory of books, but the reality that we are all aware of. The victimiser is always the rich elite that can bribe their way out either through money or connections, while the victims are always the poor ones, who are helpless and encaged with their lowly statuses. All they can do is cry, but the media can always frame their tears as antagonistic or unpatriotic. We like it or not, the world will not work merely with a good heart; it requires endless power for control, influence and even for the seeking of real justice, not just in India but all over the world.
Yet in the capitalist world, the poor still have no other option but to seek help from their institutions. As the deceased painter's father lodged a report at the Pushkar Police Station, seeking help to punish the murderer who killed the old man’s only son, leaving him and his five daughters lost in darkness.
What the Law Says and What Really Takes Place
The public must know its rights in a democratic state, while Section 106 claims the accidental killing is not similar to murder, it yet offers ten years of imprisonment for culpable homicide. Also, there are penalties for speeding and drunk driving; hence, the public must gather to demand penalties and ten years of imprisonment against Digvijay. The public can be the main cause for earning justice for Ravi, as it is for the Pune Porsche case, which led to a massive building of heated arguments about the juvenile justice system that only protects the elite class. It is working like the old days of the Sub Continent in 1947, when the Britishers only favoured the educated ones with whom they had the closest ties. Is the bias coming from the roots of the British?
More than just a Crash
Coming back to the victimiser, named Digvijay Singh, who claims he killed Ravi unintentionally, to save himself from the brutality of the law. But is he really that innocent? Can a person whose automobile was found with multiple alcohol bottles be left without interrogation? Can a person who has a list of pending challans due to over-speeding call this murder as some incident that happened accidently? A person who is aware of the euphoric effect that alcohol provides and the adversaries it can cause with his bad habit of speeding has no right to call this murder attempt an accidental killing.
A nation is measured by its Justice.
Ravi’s life has come to an end; now he can’t help his old man, nor can he be there for his four dear sisters. It's hurtful to imagine how his father will make both ends meet now that he is retired and has four daughters under his responsibility. But would Ravi’s family get justice, or would this case also evaporate and disguise in thin air? Only time could tell if the system would tackle the careless murderer with brutality for committing two crimes at the same time. Digvijay must be punished for driving in a state of intoxication of alcohol and killing an innocent life, as if the lives of the poor are worthless.
The worth can only be told by how the system would tackle this heartbreaking case.
References:
- https://www.ndtv.com
- https://www.business-standard.com
- https://www.reddit.com
- https://www.devdiscourse.com
- https://www.dnaindia.com