Rage spills over on roads; reels only fan the fire

One incident happened in Delhi’s Harsh Vihar with two youngsters, Himanshu and his brother Ankur, as they were walking towards a Ramleela fairground. Three persons on a motorbike brushed past the brothers, weaving their two-wheeler dangerously through the milling crowd. The brothers, in turn, asked the trio to ride carefully, which led to an altercation. Soon the bike riders fished out knives, attacked, and wounded Himanshu and Ankur. The gruesome act unfolded in front of thousands of people. The knife-wielding miscreants could easily have been disarmed and overpowered if just a few of the onlookers had joined forces. It could have saved a family from tragedy. These were not assailants equipped with an AK-47 rifles or grenades.

No one moved even a finger.

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The trio attacked Ankur, causing fatal injuries to his chest, neck, stomach, and thighs. Himanshu, too, suffered serious injuries but managed to get his injured brother to the nearest hospital on a rickshaw. But it was too late. Ankur was declared dead on arrival.

You may have heard about many such incidents where people, instead of coming forward to help the wounded, were busy making reels for social media posts.

How can these people forget they are part of society and that a day could come when they, too, will need people’s sympathy and support?

Where are we heading?

Are we heading towards a dysfunctional society, which lacks concern and is driven by cold aggression?

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Another incident in Bengaluru, the “tech capital" of India reaffirms this. This incident involved a software engineer who was driving home with his wife and nine-month-old daughter in his car. A man on a bike suddenly blocked the car. This man then started pounding his car bonnet like a man possessed.

The shocked couple couldn’t fathom what went wrong. By the time they gathered their wits, the biker had plucked the wiper off the car and smashed the car’s windshield with it. He didn’t stop there and kept pounding the windshield.

The techie’s wife, seated in the front seat, started yelling for help. Her toddler daughter, who was sleeping in her lap, woke up due to the commotion.

The terror-stricken child also started crying.

As the incident happened on a busy road, spectators gathered around in a flash and started making reels and traffic came to a halt. But the assailant kept attacking the car and though a couple of guards from the nearby showrooms came to intervene they couldn’t deter the determined assailant.

Instead of saving the couple, people were busy making reels. The reels went viral and the police took cognizance of it but the incident rattled the family.

By the time the couple reached home, their baby was suffering from very high fever. She was unable to sleep and was very disturbed. Doctors diagnosed that the baby had had a panic attack. She remained in that condition for a week and the parents gave up hope for her recovery.

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No one knows if the incident will ever fade from the child’s memory. Psychologists insist that childhood traumas leave a lasting imprint on people’s psyche.

What wrong did New Delhi’s Ankur and the toddler in Bengaluru do to deserve such a fate?

The list of such unfortunates is growing consistently, giving cause for concern, and the sad reality is that there is no effective strategy to deal with the menace.

Data corroborates the depressing truth. In 2022, the country’s capital, Delhi, witnessed 76 road rage cases, which went up to 84 the next year. This year, till August, 62 such incidents have been reported. Mister Auto’s Road Safety Index 2019 tells us Mumbai and Kolkata lead the table in road rage cases.

Reports released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) and the ministry of road transport suggest they are still dragging their feet on the scourge of road rage by not categorizing it as an issue that needs separate mention.

How many Ankurs and toddlers will suffer or pay with their lives before the government wakes up from its slumber?

Shashi Shekhar is editor-in-chief, Hindustan. Views are personal.