A chartered accountant (CA), who was awarded a two-year jail term by a magisterial court which had “inadvertently” taken him as driver of a bus instead of car, got a relief from a sessions court here which set aside his sentence.
Additional Sessions Judge Amit Bansal, while refusing to interfere with the conviction of East Delhi resident Subhash Kumar Bansal, remanded back the matter for fresh arguments on the point of sentence, saying the order suffered from “serious irregularities”.
“The order on sentence shows that the trial court has inadvertently taken wrong premises by mentioning that the convict being a professional driver of the bus should have conducted himself in a responsible manner and should have taken great care to avoid any mis?happening by giving sufficient time to passengers.
“….Facts of the case as mentioned in the judgment and the case of prosecution are different as convict was never a professional driver of a bus, but was a Chartered Accountant by profession and was driving a car,” the judge said.
The sessions court further said, “The order on sentence suffers from serious irregularity and wrong appreciation of facts,” and set aside the sentence while remanding it back to trial court for fresh arguments.
“Pass a fresh order on sentence as per law and facts of the case,” it directed the magisterial court.
The judge was hearing an appeal of the convict against the magisterial court’s last year sentence order, contending that it wrongly mentioned Subhash as a professional bus driver instead of car driver.
“…No bus was involved in the entire case and the appellant (Subhash) was the driver of the offending car..” the appeal had said.
According to the prosecution, Subhash was driving a car which hit a scooter leading to the death of the rider.
