Is it time Parliament debated on a law to punish ‘Bad Samaritans’?

At the age of 18, Anwar Ali was the sole breadwinner for his family. Last week, he was hit by a Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation bus while cycling to work in Koppal. He lay bleeding on the road. Instead of rushing him to hospital, most passersby took out their mobile phones to click pictures of the bloodied man.

A morbid, voyeuristic urge to upload heart-rending photos of the victim on social media had numbed their compassion and moral duty to come to the rescue of a dying man. Anwar's grieving mother Ramzanbi found it difficult to understand why no one rushed him to hospital?
Anwar was not the first one to die on the roads. Voyeuristic passersby have used mobile phones to click pictures in many similar incidents, unmindful of life ebbing out of accident victims due to excessive blood loss.

Medical experts are unanimous that urgent help extended by Good Samaritans in rushing an accident victim to hospital in the `golden hour', that is within an hour of the mishap, could increase chance of survival by as much as 50%.

Till recently, most hospitals refused emergency lifesaving treatment to accident victims unless the police registered a case and gave them the go ahead. On the other hand, there was a common excuse available to us passersby ­ “who wants to get involved in a police case that will entail endless summons from the police and the courts as the investigation and trial drag“. This forced Good Samaritans to curb their compassion and moral duty to help accident victims.

Three decades ago, advocate Parmanand Katara had filed a PIL in the Supreme Court pointing out the death of a motorcyclist who was hit by a speeding car. The injured was rushed to a nearby hospital, but was refused treatment by the doctors who termed it to be a police case.

In its judgment [1989 SCR (3) 997], the SC had said protection of Article 21 (right to life) overrode all other obligations and directed doctors that they were morally and legally bound to attend to an injured person and that no authority , including police, could cause hindrance or harassment to them in treating an injured. NGO `SaveLife Foundation' in 2012 had filed a PIL in the SC seeking protection for Good Samaritans, who selflessly rush accident victims to hospitals, from harassment at the hands of police and court procedures.

Pressure exerted by the apex court saw the the NDA government issue three anti-harassment notifications in the last three years to protect Good Samaritans. The notifications and the SC orders exempted a bystander or a Good Samaritan from any civil or criminal liability for taking an accident victim to hospital. In addition, it laid down guidelines for police and trial courts to extend dignified treatment to Good Samaritans who volunteer to be witnesses in accident cases.

In its final order on March 30 last year, the SC recorded the highlights of the notifications which includ ed reward or compensation to a Good Samaritan by authorities to encourage other citizens to come forward to help road accident victims.

The four-year-long exercise of the SC was driven by the common law concept that every human being whose life is in peril has a right to assistance. This concept cast a corresponding obligation on passersby or bystanders. This means every person must come to the aid of anyone whose life is in peril by giving him immediate physical assistance unless it involves danger to him or a third person or if he has other compelling reasons.

When a rampaging elephant charges at a crowd and gets hold of a member of the crowd, it would not be prudent to blame bystanders for not coming to the aid of the injured immediately .Similarly , a person who does not know swimming cannot be blamed for not jumping into a river to save a drowning person. But he must help an injured accident victim immediately by calling the police or ambulance.

Many countries have enacted laws to punish bystanders who could have but did not help an injured. Argentine penal code provides for punishment ranging from two to six years imprisonment to a person who “abandons an injured person“. In Denmark, the punishment for similar aloofness attracts imprisonment up to three years; in France, it is punishable by a jail term of up to five years and fine up to $100,000. German criminal code prescribes up to one year imprisonment for anyone who abandons an injured accident victim.

Anwar's death and many more because of apathy or aloofness of bystanders, whose compassion and duty are increasingly numbed by mobile photo mania, brings us to a new issue ­ should the government introduce a provision in Indian Penal Code to punish `Bad Samaritans' who turn to mobile phones or show aloofness even as an accident victim bleeds to death?

Section 176 of Indian Penal Code provides punishment of up to one month imprisonment for anyone who deliberately refuses to provide information to police about commission of a crime, which he witnessed.If this is so, why not punish those who witness an accident and turn a blind eye to the injured?