Ahmedabad: Vismay Shah, who had recklessly driven his BMW on a busy city road in 2013 and rammed into a motorcycle leaving two youths dead, was on Monday sentenced to five years' imprisonment by a local court.
Additional Sessions Judge PM Patel awarded the five-year jail term to 28-year-old Shah along with a fine of Rs 25,000. The court also asked Shah to pay a compensation of Rs five lakh each to the families of the two youths killed in th accident.
The accident occurred in February 2013, when Shah, who was driving his BMW car at a speed of about 110 kmph on the busy Judges bungalow road of the city, rammed it into a motorcycle killing engineering student Shivam Dave (25) and his friend, Rahul Patel (21), near Premchandnagar.
The fathers of Shivam and Rahul, who were present in the court, broke down after the pronouncement of sentence Unhappy with the quantum of punishment, they have decided to challenge the verdict in the High Court for a harsher punishment.
"We are not satisfied with the sentence, we will approach High Court in the coming days. He should have been given maximum punishment," Rahul's father Ghanshyam Patel told reporters outside the court.
"We will fight the case upto the Supreme Court to ensure that the convict gets maximum punishment and the case is seen as an example for those who kill people on roads. My son will not come back, but I am fighting this case to ensure that such incidents do not take place," he said.
Regarding compensation, he said they were never fighting the case for money. The court convicted Shah under IPC sections 304(2) (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 279 (rash driving) and 427 (mischief causing damage) and various sections of Motor Vehicle Act.
Under IPC section 304 (2), the maximum sentence could go up to 10 years of imprisonment. The court has also issued notice to one Lalit Gupta, who was a witness in the case but had turned hostile during the trial. In the notice, the court has asked why case should not be filed against him for turning hostile. The prosecution had argued for maximum sentence to the culprit in the case.
During the arguments on Monday, Public Prosecutor Pravin Trivedi told the court that Shah should be given the maximum punishment possible to set an example for others who drive recklessly on busy roads.
He also told the court that Shah showed no sympathy towards the victims, as he decided to flee from the spot instead of taking the youths to hospital. Defence lawyer had pleaded for leniency in sentence.
Vismay spent 13 months in jail after he was arrested in the case. In those 13 months, he had applied for bail 14 times in lower courts and higher courts. The Supreme Court had granted him bail in March 2014.
The CCTV footage of the incident had led to an outrage all over the country.
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