New Road Transport Act a dilemma or solution?
Samiul Azim writes for DOT :
A lot of being said about Road Transport Act 2018. Two points of this law seek my attention. In this law it has been said that if a driver drives recklessly and if it leads to a death of any person and if it is proved in the investigation, then the driver will be liable under section 103 of the Road Transportation Act 2018 and he will be punishable with 5years imprisonment or fine or with both. If a driver intentionally kills anyone and if it is proved in the investigation then the driver will be liable under section 302 of Penal code and the maximum punishment will be the death penalty. After reading this my legal hat asks me a question, is both first and second point creating a loophole in this law?
Because it has been said in the first point that if the accident occurred due to reckless driving, then the driver will be held liable under section 103 of the Road Transport Act 2018 and he will be punishable with 5 years imprisonment or fine or both. Here if any accident happens due to reckless driving and due to there is a provision for imprisonment or fine and the court has a discretionary power to give any judgment. Here the term ‘or’ creates an alternative for the criminals because if an accident occurs and it causes death to a person and if he got pecuniary punishment. Is this justifiable? In the second point it has been said that if the motor vehicle is driven intentionally for causing death and if it is found in the investigation that there was an intention of causing death behind the accident then the driver will be liable under section 302 of the Bangladesh Penal code. But it is understandable of an accident it is difficult to prove that it was an intentional offence. If the motor vehicle is a private vehicle and if there is any connection or previous enmity between the offender and the victim than the investigator can relate both actus rea and mens rea but in a case of a public vehicle, how can we prove the intention of a driver if he commits an accident? So is the law creating a loophole for the offenders on the basis of intention? A general abstraction is that a road accident can happen in two ways: either by a public transport whether the driver was negligent or the driver had no skill. My question is that if it is an accident then how can it be intentional? Now let us look into legal perspective of proving intention here.If the accident was intentional then the offender will be punishable under section 302 of the Penal Code and the maximum punishment will be death penalty. So when it in punishable under Penal Code then it is a criminal offence and most criminal offences, there are two elements to be proved, one is actus rea and second one is mensrea. In case of accident we can easily prove the first element by relating the accident as an act of the offender. But the second element i.e mens rea or an evil intention will be very difficult to be proved specially in the case of public transport because it will be easier to be proved that the accident was occurred due to negligent or reckless driving and it creates a big scope for the drivers to find a huge gap to escape from this strict punishment.
Lastly, I would like to conclude by saying thatour government is very much willing to solve this mess in our transport system by enacting and implementing new strict law. What if a driver is intentionally addicted to drugs or drunk and that leads to an accident what we will call it? Is it an intentional accident or an intentional murder? Is it creating a flexibility for the drivers of the public transport? Or is this law making a clear indirect escape for the drivers of public transport from getting the punishment of death penalty? But creating a loophole may lead the drivers to neglect the law whereas the government is trying to solve the problem. Will this loopholelead to everything in vain? That question persists.