HC quashes FIR against 4 employees of firm maintaining highway

The Bombay High Court today quashed an FIR against four employees of the firm which maintains the Sion-Panvel Highway, who had been accused of causing the death of one person by failing to repair and maintain the said road.
A bench of Justices Ranjit More and Shalini Phansalkar- Joshi ruled that even if the allegation that the said accident was a result of the poor condition of the highway was true, the officials could not be charged for causing the death and the injuries in the said accident.
On July 4, one person was killed and several others injured in a pileup of vehicles which occurred near the Uran Phata bridge after a truck hit an auto-carrier that in turn hit two other vehicles.

The police claimed that the accident was a result of the ill-maintained road and booked several officials of the Sion Panvel Tollways Private Ltd (SPTL) operations, the firm that had been awarded a contract for the construction of the Uran Phata Bridge and the maintenance of the Uran Panvel Road.
The police booked the accused persons under Section 304 (ii) of the Indian Penal Code for culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
A plea was then filed in the high court challenging the FIR.

The petitioners, the vice president, the assistant vice president, the senior manager and project head, and an officer of the SPTL, sought that the charges against them be quashed and FIR be set aside.

The prosecution alleged that the bridge and the road had become slippery in the monsoon season since the SPTL had failed to tar it properly and in-time.
It said even before the mishap, several other minor accidents had taken place along the stretch owing to it being slippery and despite the fact that several people had brought the problem to the SPTL's notice, it had failed to act.
The petitioners, however, argued that they had no knowledge or criminal intent to cause the accident and this, could not be booked under Section 304 (ii) of the IPC.
"Perusal of the FIR in the present case clearly reflect that the cause of this accident was the rash and negligent driving of the truck. The only role attributed to the present petitioners is that they failed to take proper care of the said road," the bench said.

"They did not repair it, though the fact that road has become slippery, was brought to their notice. It is no where alleged in the entire FIR that the petitioners did any act with the intention or knowledge that the act is likely to cause the death of any person or such bodily injuries," the bench added.
"In such situation, even if the allegations made in the FIR are taken in their entirety as true, they cannot attract the charge under Section 304 (II) of the IPC since such a charge require some positive act on the part of the accused (to cause the incident)," it said while directing that the FIR be quashed.