It is high time the officers of electricity authorities, right from the top brass to the men on the field, wake up and put their efforts to obviate instances of electrocution due to negligence in maintaining electricity infrastructures being repeated, said the High Court of Karnataka.
Stating that citizens cannot bear the impact of such repetitive negligence, leading to deaths, the court said the criminal case registered against the officials of the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (Bescom) could not be quashed merely because the report of the Electrical Inspectorate (EI) had not identified individual engineers responsible for snapping of the electrical wire or delay in removing the snapped live electric wire from the footpath.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna made these observations while dismissing the petitions filed by three engineers of Bescom, who had questioned the legality of registration of a case of criminal negligence against them in connection with the electrocution of a woman and her nine-month-old baby near Hope Farm in November 2023.
The court said that the petitioners – Sreeramu V., Executive Engineer; Subramanya T., Assistant Executive Engineer; and Chethan S., Assistant Engineer (Electrical) of Bescom’s Whitefield sub-division, will have to face investigation.
The case was registered on the complaint of Santosh Kumar, whose wife, Soundarya, and daughter, Suviksha, were electrocuted. The incident occurred when Soundarya accidentally stepped on a live electric wire lying on the footpath at around 6 a.m. on November 19, 2023, when they were walking towards their home in the city after returning from their native place in Tamil Nadu.
It was claimed on behalf of the petitioner-engineers that the report of the EI did not find them individually responsible for the accident, and also, a coordinate bench of the High Court had quashed their transfer and suspension based on the report of the EI.
What report said
However, Justice Nagaprasanna rejected their contention on noticing that the report of the EI, though it had not named any individual for the accident, had stated that the “accident could have been avoided if the old and dilapidated wires were identified beforehand and were maintained in good condition, and by installing certain safety equipment…”
Also, the Court noted that there is an allegation in the complaint that the incident of live electric wire lying on the footpath was reported to Besom’s helpline even before the woman and her daughter stepped onto it.
Whether there was a complaint registered with Bescom helpline prior to the incident and whether the officers took note of the said complaints from the residents of the area and attended to it immediately are all a matter of investigation, the Court said while pointing out that consideration of negligence is different in civil and criminal law.
Not natural calamity
It would have been altogether different if the incident had occurred due to natural calamities, the Court said while pointing out that it is a case of negligence due to which two precious lives were lost.
Stating that “responsibility would flow from the top brass to the lowest rung of officials and none can escape the responsibility in case of the act of negligence…” the court said that the investigation is essential in the present case to identify the officers responsible for the negligence.
