Hit-and-run case: Charges framed against Utsav Bhasin

A Delhi court today framed charges against Utsav Bhasin, accused of ramming his BMW car into a motorcycle and killing a man in 2008, under a harsher penal provision, which may attract life imprisonment as the maximum sentence.

“There is, prima facie, sufficient evidence to frame charges under sections 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 279 (driving rashly which could endanger human life) and 338 (causing grievous hurt) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC),” Additional Sessions Judge Pinki said.

Bhasin, the son of a Haryana-based industrialist, was driving his BMW car when he allegedly hit the two-wheeler on Moolchand flyover in South Delhi, killing Anuj Singh, the motorcyclist, on September 11, 2008.

A journalist belonging to a TV channel was also injured in the incident.

The court rejected the plea of senior advocate Ramesh Gupta, counsel for Bhasin, that the accused he cannot be charged under section 304 of the IPC, which prescribes life sentence as the maximum punishment, as he neither had the knowledge nor the intention to commit the alleged offence.

The accused, at best, should be charged under section 304-A (causing death by rash and negligent act) of the IPC, which prescribes two years’ simple imprisonment or fine or both as punishment, the defence counsel had submitted.

To buttress the arguments, Gupta had also cited the Delhi High Court judgement in the 1998 sensational BMW hit-and-run case in which hotelier Sanjeev Nanda was awarded two years’ jail term as sentence.

Paving the way to start trial in the case, the court has now fixed July 21 as the date for recording statements of prosecution witnesses.

Earlier, police had filed the chargesheet against Bhasin under section 304 of IPC.