IMPORTANT POINT
The offence under section 199A of the MV Act is independent and can be initiated without a charge against the juvenile for petty offences.

ORDER :

The consequences of reckless driving are manifold. Instances of minors taking the wheel without possessing a license to drive have been on the increase, leading to numerous accidents. Repercussions of such acts include injuries and fatalities not only to the drivers but also to the innocents on the road. With a near immunity against prosecution of a minor, the tendency to indulge in such acts unabashedly has seen a rise, with the owners of motor vehicles not taking due precautions to prevent such acts. The legislature finally stepped in with a provision for parental or owner accountability. Section 199A of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 (for brevity, ‘the MV Act’) was incorporated in 2019, creating a fiction of guilt on the guardian of the juvenile or the owner of the motor vehicle. Creating criminal liability on the guardian or the owner of a motor vehicle is seminal and has contemporary social relevance.

2. All these petitions are preferred under section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, ( for short ‘the Cr.P.C’), challenging either the first information report or the final report filed against the guardian of the juvenile or the owner of the motor vehicle for having permitted the juvenile to drive a motor vehicle in contravention of the Act. Since the main issues involved are common, these cases are disposed of by this order.

3. To comprehend the issues involved, the facts in Crl.M.C No. 34 of 2024, which is treated as the leading case, are narrated below. According to the prosecution, on 18-03-2023, at 01.00 PM, the accused had rashly and negligently, in a manner that can endanger other persons, permitted a minor who did not have a licence, to drive the motorbike bearing registration number KL-11-AT-26, owned by him, through the Athanikkal Public Road and thereby committed the offences under section 199A of the MV Act apart from section 336 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. The accused is the owner of the motorbike and he challenges the final report filed in C.C. No.403 of 2023 on the files of the Judicial First Class Magistrate’s Court, Parappanangadi. It must be mentioned at this juncture itself that petitioner has not produced the FIR, the seizure mahazar or even the statement of witnesses in this petition challenging the final report.

4. Arguments were addressed mainly by Adv. Thareeq Anver, Adv. K.M.Firoze on behalf of Adv. P.C.Muhammed Noushiq, Adv. K.K.Dheerendra Krishnan, Adv. K. Rakesh and Adv. Nima Meriam Koshy, on behalf of the petitioners, while all other counsel for the various petitioners, adopted the submissions of the aforenoted Counsel. On behalf of the State, Sri. K.A. Noushad, learned Public Prosecutor addressed the arguments while Smt. Sreeja V., Sri.T.R.Renjith and Sri. M.C. Ashi, learned Public Prosecutors supported the submissions.

5. According to the learned counsel for the petitioners, the offence under section 199A of the MV Act cannot be attracted without a charge having been registered against the juvenile as held in the decision in Polachan v. State of Kerala [Crl.M.C No. 7479/2022] and Sameera v. State of Kerala [2023 KHC Online 9217]. It was also submitted that, in most of the cases, the police had not registered either any First Information Report (for short ‘FIR’) against the juvenile or submitted a Social Background Report (for short ‘SBR’) before the Juvenile Justice Board (for short ‘JJB’) alleging that the juvenile had committed an offence under the MV Act. The learned counsel also submitted that the offence under section 199A of the MV Act will be attracted only when the JJB comes to the conclusion that an offence under the MV Act had been committed by the juvenile. According to them, since, under section 8 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 (for short ‘the JJ Act’) the JJB alone can decide whether a juvenile has committed an offence or not and without such a finding, even the FIR against the guardian or the owner of the motor vehicle coul