The Bombay High Court on Tuesday confirmed death sentence of Santosh Maruti Mane, a rouge driver who had “hijacked” a State transport bus and mowed down nine people and injured 36 others grievously on the streets of Pune in January, 2012, after terming his crime as “cruel, diabolical and revolting” that shocked the collective conscience of the society.
“This is an exceptional and rarest of rare cases where the crime is so cruel, diabolical and revolting so as to shock the collective conscience of the society… In rarest of rare cases where collective conscience of the community is so shocked, it expects the Court to inflict death penalty irrespective of its personal opinion as regards desirability or otherwise of retaining the death penalty,” a HC bench observed.
Rejecting 40-year-old Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation driver Santosh Mane’s plea of being insane at the time of the incident, the HC bench of Justices PD Kode and VM Kanade observed in their 114-page verdict: “The magnitude of his crime cannot be brushed aside on the ground of his false plea of insanity which he raised after the gruesome and gory incident was over”.
“The trial court, in our view, has rightly held that it was a false plea raised by him after realising the consequences of his crime. It cannot be accepted that an insane act cannot be committed by a sane mind,” the judges noted.
In spine chilling drama that had unfolded at 8.15 am on January 25, 2012 after an off-duty driver spirited away an empty State transport bus (MH BT 1532) parked in Swargate Bus Depot, took it out of the depot and drove in on opposite one-way of the busy Pune-Solapur Road, mowing down pedestrians and smashing all kinds of vehicles that came in his way.
Having mowed down a pedestrian at the gate of the bus depot itself, Mane went on a frenzied driving spree during the next one hour that took him to various areas of Pune. Apart from ramming against 25 vehicles during his 20 km-road rampage, Mane had either crushed or knocked down pedestrians at will. In all, nine people were killed and at least 36 others injured in the nerve-wreaking incident.