00:00How much is a life worth on an Indian road?
00:02In Pune in 2024, it was worth a 300-word essay on road safety.
00:07In May of that year, Anisha Vadya and Ashwini Koshita, both in their mid-20s,
00:12were riding a bike in Pune's Kalyani Nagar.
00:1417-year-old Vedant Agarwal celebrated the end of his 12th exams with friends,
00:19spending over 60,000 rupees on alcohol and a private party,
00:22and on his way home, allegedly drunk, killed the two deckies.
00:27The court initially asked the team to write a 300-word essay on road safety.
00:32Public outrage erupted.
00:33Newsrooms covered the story breathlessly.
00:36Social media exploded, and the decision was eventually reversed.
00:39The minor was sent to a juvenile observation home.
00:42There were allegations of special treatment, bribery, switched blood samples,
00:47parents accused of colluding with hospital staff,
00:50tens of people arrested, and at the end, everyone is out on bail as of 2026.
00:55Two years later, a 42-year-old man in Mumbai was run over by a speeding car driven by a
01:02team.
01:02A day after, a woman in Indore met the same fate.
01:05And a young man in Delhi was also killed by a 17-year-old underage driver.
01:10This begs the question, is there an epidemic of team drivers driving drunk or recklessly,
01:15and killing, and then walking off without punishment?
01:19March this year, Srinivas Tanley, a 42-year-old businessman,
01:23was cycling for fitness and health in Kalyan when a 17-year-old driving an I-20 hit him.
01:28It was Tanley's first ride on the bicycle.
01:31The teen reportedly called it a minor accident on social media before deleting the post promptly.
01:36The punishment is yet to be seen.
01:38The minor had gone into hiding before being detained.
01:41His mother has been booked for negligence.
01:44Then on March 2025 this year, Indore, Shampa Pante, an engineer and a mother of two,
01:49was a part of a protest against a penthouse being used as an Airbnb.
01:54The penthouse's owner allegedly called his son to teach them a lesson.
01:59The rich man's son not only drove his car through the crowd of protesters,
02:02but also doubled back, killing Shampa.
02:05The father and son are both in custody.
02:0823-year-old Sahil Dhaneshra was supposed to live in Manchester starting this year.
02:12He got his acceptance for master's from a dream college
02:16and was about to finish his final year graduation here.
02:19But a teen, allegedly filming a reel while driving,
02:23rammed into him, killing him under the car in February of this year.
02:27The teen's father says it was a mistake the victim's mother might not agree.
02:31Samaypur Badli, 2025, a minor drove a car at high speed, dragging a man to death for several meters.
02:39Ahmedabad, 2025, a 15-year-old took his father's Mercedes for a joyride,
02:44killing a 60-year-old pedestrian.
02:46This video can easily be over an hour long if it featured all the cases where a drunk or a
02:52reckless teenager
02:53drove an expensive car over people, killing them in a majority of cases.
02:57An unsurprising pattern here is that most of these fatal drivers are from affluent families,
03:03with ways to manipulate freedom and accountability.
03:06If nothing else works, we can always say driver gadi chala raha tha,
03:10like the Pune-Porsh crash family initially tried to claim.
03:14But the basic question is how many deaths and killings will it take
03:17for the government to introduce strict measures?
03:20Cancel the licenses of the parents who let their illegal minor teen drivers go on joyrides?
03:26Maybe ensure the minor cannot apply for a license in the near future?
03:30Maybe try the teen as adult, like Sahil's mother had demanded.
03:35Or maybe the law enforcement authorities can think of other, stricter penalties.
03:39After momentary outrage, we move on to the next sensational headline,
03:43the family of the accused and the teen driver themselves resume their lives.
03:48Those who cannot recover from the shock and the grief are the loved ones of the victims.
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