It was the month of December. The mustard crops were beginning to bloom in Punjab and the chilly winter weather made the ambience more peaceful. More than three decades back, on one such fine afternoon on December 27, 1988, three men including Gurnam Singh (65) were going to a bank in Patiala to withdraw some money for the forthcoming marriage of Gurnam’s son.
Singh was driving his Maruti car and when he reached near Sheranwala Gate Crossing, he found his way blocked by a Gypsy. When he urged them to let him pass, the Gypsy occupants were annoyed. A tall Sikh man stepped out of the vehicle, dragged out Gurnam Singh and together with his friend, began to punch him. Gurnam was taken to a nearby hospital where he later died of cardiac arrest.
The tall man who assaulted him was none other than cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu, who went on to play his second innings in life as a politician. Sidhu was convicted by the Supreme Court of the crime 34 years later. While sentencing Sidhu to one-year rigorous imprisonment, it said that in the given circumstances, he had to bear the consequences of having lost his temper. After spending 317 days in prison, Sidhu walked free on April 1 from Patiala jail.
Incidents of road rage on rise in the city
Not just the levels of mercury are soaring these days, but the tempers too are running high among the Delhiites, especially on the roads. Why is that every time we see that whenever a person is out there on a road, driving a vehicle, whether a two-wheeler or a four-wheeler or even a three-wheeler and if some mishap occurs as little as someone hastily overtaking their vehicle, they suddenly lose all their cool and get ready to enter into any sort of argument which sometimes has also proven fatal?
Recently, in a bid to show their influence in the area, two people allegedly thrashed a 19-year-old man to death after a minor argument between them over giving way to their vehicle turned violent. The story began with two people, Manish and Lalchand, who had gone to Rohini, to the residence of their elder sister on April 22 at about 2.30 pm.
They came back to the central Delhi area where Manish used to reside around 10.30 pm. When their taxi was entering a narrow street, a man named Pankaj Thakur was sitting on his scooty, blocking the alley. They asked him to get up and give way to the taxi, but, within no time things turned volatile. Both Manish and Lalchand scuffled with Pankaj and when the taxi left, they again challenged him declaring themselves as ‘Dada’ of the area.
Pankaj, too, was in no mood to bow down his head. He challenged them to come to Patel Nagar to see his influence in the area. Manish and Lalchand accepted his challenge and now they had to reach Patel Nagar which was about 2 km from the place where they were arguing with Pankaj. Astonishingly, they found none other than Pankaj himself who asked them to sit on his scooty as he will take them to Patel Nagar. The trio left – Pankaj was driving and both Manish and Lalchand were his pillion riders.
Mid-way, the pillion riders Manish and Lal Chand realized that they might have made a mistake as Pankaj along with his mates could thrash them at Patel Nagar and they both conspired to beat him even before reaching the destination.
Subsequently, they choked Pankaj from behind on the moving vehicle and all three fell down on the road. Pankaj received head injury and both the accused persons, without giving him a chance to get up, started beating him with kicks on his face, head, neck and other parts of the body. They both thrashed and kicked Pankaj to death. It was not an isolated case of extreme road rage, rather every then and now, an incident comes to light like a person is being dragged on the bonnet of a car and the driver is not stopping, just to teach the victim ‘a lesson’.
In October last year, a man along with his family members was present outside his house in north Delhi and he saw a man in a car arguing with a boy. Upon seeing this, he moved towards the driver and tried to pacify him and asked him not to make an altercation on a festive day. But the angry driver escaped from there and while driving his vehicle, he ran his car over three people. The injured were admitted to hospital and the accused driver ultimately landed in jail.
Why people behave the way they do on the road
Delving deep into the psyche that triggers people to spill blood on the roads, this newspaper spoke to several experts to delve into human behaviour. Anger is an emotional state that varies in intensity from mild to intense fury and rage and is also accompanied by physiological and biological changes. Like other emotions, anger is caused by both external and internal factors like one may be angry at a specific person, which is external while getting angry at events like traffic jams or unfavourable situations can be termed as internal.
Dr Nimesh Desai, former director of the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (IHBAS), says that anger, is, like any other emotion, natural and human as long as it is within the limits. It can also be a useful emotion if conveyed and expressed correctly, he says.
“The increase of anger can directly be linked with the sense of frustration. The frustration can be in many forms like with self or with the world. The frustration is rising because our aspirations are rising in the world of today. So, the important point is to understand the difference between expression and reality,” he said.
Dr Desai said there is no proper and adequate opportunity and situation in the current society for expression of frustration.“The increasing road rage incidents are the result of accumulated frustration... there must be a mechanism in place to deal with the frustration like talking to family, friends etc to curb such incidents,” he said.
‘Right of way norm a huge issue in itself’
Dr Rohit Baluja, president, Institute of Road Traffic Education (IRTE), attributed road rage incidents to poor traffic engineering and lack of respect among road users.“It is not the drivers who are at fault but all the stakeholders: agency which gave the driving license, the traffic police, the construction of the road all contribute to it,” he said.
“People who respect the right of way find that their rights are violated on a continuous basis, and lose their temper over repeated violations. It is not a question of age of drivers etc, but road traffic engineering and poor enforcement of traffic management on roads,” he added.
Explaining the concept of ‘right of way’, Baluja said, “See, at every junction, intersection or a roundabout, wherever two vehicles or pedestrians meet, somebody has a right to go and somebody has a responsibility to stop. But today, no one cares for the right of way. Everybody wants his right of way and when he doesn’t get it, if he is not wise enough, he gets upset which may get manifested in road rage. So the fault actually lies in the system and the governance that we should prepare roads in such a way that people do not get angry.”
No clear-cut provision prescribed in law books
SC advocate Ashok Singh said ‘road rage’ is not defined in the criminal law as such.“If any such incident happens on the road and if the victim is a woman and the accused is a man, the case will be registered under sections of IPC like 354 or 509 depending upon the situation. If both are men, the case gets registered under 323 or 324 among other sections of IPC,” Singh said.
He pointed out that the presence of traffic police officers and installation of CCTV cameras is imperative to check such incidents.“The miniscule presence of police posts, especially on highways, is also a concern. If someone is under attack on a highway, he or she finds it difficult to immediately approach the nearest police post. Just like there are milestones on highways after every 300-400 metre, there should be a provision to mention the location of the nearest police post on it,” he said.