Hit, Kill, Run & Chill

Drunk driver-cum-killer Alistair Pareira’s acquittal on charges of culpable homicide (click here for story) should provide great relief to many of us who drive drunk. The news that you can run over and kill seven people and yet be let off lightly makes me want to order another double patiala peg for the road. (Salman Khan might have thrown a wild bash in celebration… his own drunken driving case in which one person died is still stuck in the trial courts, and poor Salmanbhai killed just one chap!) Obviously, some serious money exchanged hands, and the evidence was sabotaged. After all, what’s the cost of lives of migrant labourers from Karnataka and Andhra in a city like Bombay? Zilch. That’s a no-brainer, the truth that the nation’s law enforcement machinery operates on the principle of different strokes for different folks.

However, what I don’t understand is this: why don’t they make amendments in the law, and make every death caused by drunk drivers tantamount to culpable homicide, without exception? Would that not prove to be enough of a deterrent for drunken drivers? And that sort of an amendment is badly needed in a city that’s full-on with people sleeping/squatting in the city’s patli gallies… in fact, pretty much every street in the city is a patli galli today, thanks to unplanned development and monumental migration from other states into the city. It is also a fact that a whole number of people drive drunk on our roads, and accidents are inevitable.

Sadly, that amendment ain’t gonna happen in a great hurry. Not at least till some big neta’s family members get run over by a drunk Alistair Pareira. Until now, only the zero-value people have been mowed down.

Till then, let’s hit the roads, bottoms up! Cheers!