The 17-year-old drunk juvenile driving a Porsche Taycan at 160 km/hour in Pune, did not alone kill 24-year-olds Anish Awadhiya and Ashwini Costa. Neither did the juvenile’s father, prominent builder Vishal Agarwal, who was arrested in Sambhajinagar this morning. The murderers of the two IT engineers are an intricate machinery of complicity and impunity: Several institutions enabled a tragedy of this magnitude through their collective dereliction of duty and failure to uphold the law.
Here are some of the killers that colluded in this “accident”. The authorities that allowed the luxury sedan to be driven on the streets of the city without proper registration or licence plates since March. A system that lets off underage drivers (and their guardians) with barely a slap on the wrist on the off chance that they are apprehended. An establishment that is only too happy to serve alcohol to minors, when the legal drinking age in most Indian states is 21, and 25 in Maharashtra. A system that turns a blind eye to enforcing penalties for offenses like drunk driving, driving without a licence, or overspeeding, particularly when the offenders are wealthy, famous and powerful.
On the other side of the accident is a justice system that granted bail to the culprit within 15 hours of detention, on conditions that included a 300-word essay, assisting traffic police for 15 days, and seeking the help of a psychiatrist. This is the value that magistrates have put on our lives. Such trivial, meagre stipulations openly scoff at the grief of the families of the young victims.
Also read: Men like Brij Bhushan, Revanna pay for their actions—only when politically convenient
Outrage and apathy
The leniency shown in the immediate aftermath of the devastating accident in Pune is not unprecedented in India’s legal history. It is a pattern. One is reminded of earlier high-profile cases where public figures managed to evade stringent punishment despite severe allegations. The Sanjeev Nanda BMW case in Delhi introduced the phrase “hit-and-run” to the national lexicon in 1999. A few years later, Salman Khan solidified it in our collective consciousness.
Both cases set up a disturbing precedent that made the message clear to ordinary Indian citizens: If you’re a person of influence, the judicial outcome of your crimes will amount to nothing more than a mere tickle. What the rest of us will be left holding are tired cliches about how cheap human life is in India, or that old bromide after every avoidable tragedy, “Spirit of Mumbai”.
The public outrage in the Pune case has no doubt pressured the police into acting swiftly and possibly overcorrecting. They say that the accused should be tried as an adult, owing to the severity of the crime. But really, we must examine our own role in public life and ask ourselves some difficult questions.
Ashwini Costa and Anish Awadhiya were bright, promising individuals, just like our next-door neighbours, on the brink of forging successful careers. But if they weren’t “people like us”, would we witness this kind of widespread outrage? Every year, thousands of people die avoidable deaths in India, and the poor and marginalised are disproportionately affected. Yet they pass unnoticed, because only certain deaths seem to ignite public fury unless the scale is too vast to be obscured by a veil of public apathy.
Take the Odisha train collision of 2023, that killed more than 290 people, most of whom were in general category compartments. Over 1,200 people were injured. However, in the last one year alone, 2,590 people lost their lives on Mumbai’s suburban railway network, mostly due to falling off overcrowded running trains. The corresponding figure for 2022 was 2,507. Despite the staggering numbers, it’s the episodic calamities that capture our collective outrage. Routine, everyday tragedies are normalised. They fade into the backdrop, and become part and parcel of life in a big city.
Conditional compassion
It isn’t just trains. Indians are dying everywhere in preventable tragedies.
They are dying in sewers. According to government data, 1,035 people have died while cleaning sewers since 1993. These deaths average more than 300-500 a year. And these are just the reported figures, arguably not reflective of actual ones.
Indians are dying in the death traps that are firecracker factories. Following the deaths of 40 people at the Sivakasi factory explosion in 2012, 298 people have lost their lives in similar incidents since 2014.
Many are dying due to an overheating planet, in severe heat and cold waves, and routine floods. Thousands of Indians are getting electrocuted, falling into manholes and off newly constructed flyovers, buried under illegal hoardings, getting mauled by stray animals and dying in fatal accidents involving stray cattle.
Are any of these issues on the manifestos of political parties that campaign during election season? Or are we happy to swing between mangalsutra and mandir and Muslims?
This selective attention highlights a broader, unsettling truth about our empathy. It is only when we see ourselves reflected in the victims that our empathy flows freely. Our compassion is often conditional, circumstantial, and not meant for everyone.
As we reflect on the deaths of Anish Awadhiya and Ashwini Costa, we must also force ourselves to confront our collective moral blind spots – because our indifference makes us complicit. We rage against high-profile crimes, but we’re accepting of daily injustices that don’t affect us directly.
It would serve us well to remember that some day, we can all be victims of the same systemic negligence that allows a juvenile to drive a death machine on our streets. And in the end, the price of our selective empathy is paid for in human lives.
Karanjeet Kaur is a journalist, former editor of Arré, and a partner at TWO Design. She tweets @Kaju_Katri. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)
very good and made your day ms. Kaur . However, it would have been more productive for your audience if you had done some journalism and revealed details such as the blood sample delays; the names of the people who were grossly negligent etc rather than this wishy washy I am goody goody article.
each day such cases happen and have been happening, they’ll have some media attention for a week or so and after that we the public forget it… only persons who remember such a case are the victim’s family and friends… yes, many are avoidable deaths but the govts. at state and central are least bothered.. another important area of avoidable deaths is the medical errors happening in many govt. and even corporate hospitals. they use the patients for learning… and prior to any surgery get a signature from patient’s family a consent on the surgery and the outcome where in the hospital isn’t responsible for any death… and when the death of a happy patient occurs who came to hospital walking with full zeal, the doctors explain in some medical terms of the cause of death and everyone needs to be quite with no case or any one held responsible… only the families know the loss, a life lost and monetary!! and now the new laws by govts. say we can’t hit any doctor for their negligence…. they’re now legal killers, not murderers…
as rightly said by the writer, avoidable deaths and our system is least bothered to protect. like in entire middle east for last 2 decades there are no metal or iron gas cylinders at use in houses or hotels, all are light weight with no cylinder explosion cases at all… can’t the indian govt. do the same to avoid so many deaths with explosions? many such things…
Why is nobody asking other relevant questions here too? Were the victims wearing helmets? Were they drunk too? Why does this country hates the rich? An auto driver hits a car, who has to pay, regardless of whose mistake it is? When a rickshaw puller is hit by an auto, nobody asks any questions the rickshaw puller? Is it perhaps possible that he too might be at fault? Perhaps the mistake was made by both parties? But NO. In this country if one of the parties is rich, it is automatically assumed that the mistake was made by the rich and a black and white picture is painted to brainwash citizens.
Also, I am curious as to why the journalist has changed the name of the male victim to make it sound like a Hindu name?
In this case one can clearly see the bike was not at fault the is CCTV footage establishing that. The anger comes from the fact that preferential treatment is being given to the 17 yr old by the entire system initially and the police questioning the relationship between the deceased.
The issue is that the Policing is to blame… And being from Chandigarh I realized that Bombay Poona and Maharashtra have ineffective policing… Two reasons.. Number ONE… Too many people for The police.. Police needs to be atleast TEN times as now.. Means multiplied by 10 because population has gone 100 times… Secondly.. Police is scared of money goondas and politicians
The day Indians stop making babies the value of Indian lives will go up. There are just too many of us right now, for anyone to give a … For so many life is even worse than death.
Author covered the topic well. Rich and poor are equal according to law and order only in cinemas.