President Ram Nath Kovind has approved a bill Karnataka has passed to provide legal and financial assistance to those who help road accident victims, PTI quoted unidentified officials as saying on Sunday.
The Karnataka Good Samaritan and Medical Professional (Protection and Regulation during Emergency Situations) Bill, 2016, is the first such piece of legislation enacted in the country. The Department of Parliamentary Affairs sent the bill to Kovind for his approval on February 18, 2017, “as clauses 3, 4, 5, 9 and 13 of the Bill are repugnant to Chapter 12, 23, and 24 of the Code of Criminal Procedure Act, 1973, which is a central legislation”, The Hindu reported.
The law aims to encourage people to help road accident victims and reduce “fears of harassment at the hands of police personnel” during subsequent investigations. The law will protect people who help victims during the “golden hour” – the first hour after a traumatic injury that is crucial to a injured person’s survival.
The legislation covers the costs of “running around to courts and police stations” and grants the “Samaritans” exemption from repeated attendance in courts. It also makes it mandatory for all government and private hospitals to give first aid to accident victims. Karnataka accounted for a significantly high number of road accident fatalities in 2016 and 2015.
In 2015, the Union Surface Transport Ministry issued several guidelines in compliance with a Supreme Court order to ensure that “good Samaritans” are not harassed.
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