AHMEDABAD: Can a dead man testify in a case involving his own death and perhaps even produce evidence of his own fatality?
It seems the Sanand police think so. When Poonam Senva died after being knocked off his bike by a truck, the police, in the case’s FIR, named him as the witness of his own death.
The 26-year-old from Sanand’s Khoraj village was riding his motorcycle on the Viramgam-Sanand highway on the night of Dec 8 when he was hit by a truck near Madhavnagar crossroads.
The FIR registered before PSI NR Tarar, based on Poonam’s elder brother Baldev, states, āThe truck driver drove his vehicle with speed and negligence and rammed into the motorcycle of Poonam Senva. In the accident, ‘sahed’ (witness) Poonam Senva suffered critical injuries and succumbed to his injuries at a private hospital in Sanand.ā
Sanand police filed a case against the truck driver, charging him with causing death by negligent and rash driving under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Motor Vehicles Act.
This is not the first instance of dead people or things being wrongly attributed in cases related to deaths.
āA motorcycle and a bovine named in two recent deathsā
Sources said that it often happens that those who die an accidental death, for example, by falling into a pit while riding a two-wheeler, are named accused in their own deaths, mainly because it is too much of a task to probe deeper to find the actual reason or culprit.
Recently, a motorcycle and a bovine were named for two deaths in separate cases.
In Sep 2023, Kheda police named an unknown bovine as an accused in the FIR filed at Nadiad (West) police station after failing to identify the cattle owner, the sources said.
In another case recorded in Oct 2022, a man, according to a police complaint with Kheda town police, took the blame for an accident involving him and his cousin after hitting a stray bovine.
His cousin died in the accident.
In this case too, cops slacked in efforts to find the stray bovine’s owner, the sources said.
