2-yr jail for Punjab Roadways driver

Mohali, February 15

A driver of the Punjab Roadways has been sentenced to two years of imprisonment for ramming his bus into a school bus, causing the death of a student and injuries to another.

The court of Judicial Magistrate First Class, Kharar, also imposed a fine of Rs 3,000 on the convict, Balbir Singh of Samrala in Ludhiana.

A case under Sections 279, 337, 338 and 304-A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) was registered against Balbir Singh at the Kharar (Sadar) police station here. According to Ramdeep Partap Singh, the counsel for St Joseph’s School, Chandigarh, the accident had taken place on February 12 in 2018 in which a student of the school, Samarth Sachdeva (10), had died while another student Aarav had sustained injuries.

The counsel claimed that Balbir Singh, who was driving a Punjab Roadways bus of Ludhiana depot, had hit the school bus in Kharar on February 12, 2018. “The school bus was carrying 10 students at the time of the accident, which had occurred in the morning. The 10-year-old student had sustained a head injury and died on the spot,” said Ramdeep Partap Singh.

When he came to know about the student’s death, Balbir Singh had run away from the spot.

Pronouncing the sentence, the court awarded two years of rigorous imprisonment along with a fine of Rs 3,000 under Section 304-A of the IPC, two-year jail term under Section 338 of the IPC and six months of imprisonment under Section 279 of the IPC. All the sentences will run concurrently, ordered the court.

2018 incident

A Samrala native, Balbir Singh, had rammed his bus into a school bus, leaving Samarth Sachdeva, a 10-year-old student of St. Joseph’s School in Chandigarh, dead. The incident took place in Kharar in 2018. —TNS

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