KSRTC Driver Acquitted of Negligent Homicide After Following Conductor's Signal to Move Bus

A Supreme Court bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and N.V. Anjaria acquits a KSRTC bus driver of Sections 279 and 304A IPC, holding that acting on the conductor's whistle cannot constitute culpable negligence.

The Supreme Court has acquitted a Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation bus driver who had been convicted for over a decade for the death of a passenger who fell from his bus in April 2011. The Court found that the driver, Mohammad Hanif Jainum Khalifa, moved the bus only after the conductor whistled to signal that passengers had alighted — and that attributing criminal negligence to a driver who acted on that standard operational signal was both unreasonable and illogical. Three courts below had maintained the conviction. The Supreme Court set aside all of them, holding that the concurrent findings amounted to a manifest error.

How the Case Reached the Supreme Court

On 17 April 2011, at around 3:30 pm, the complainant Shamra Yalu Mane (PW1), his sister-in-law Shobha, and her mother Housabai boarded KSRTC bus registration No. KA-23-F-390, driven by Khalifa, to travel from Athani to their home village of Mangasuli. At around 4:30 pm, as the three were preparing to alight near Mallayya Temple, the bus conductor whistled to stop the bus. The bus stopped. While Shobha was in the process of getting down, the bus moved. She fell, sustained grievous head injuries, was taken first to Mangasuli Hospital and then to Miraj Hospital, and subsequently died.

An FIR was registered at Kagawad Police Station. The 1st Additional Civil Judge and JMFC, Athani, convicted Khalifa on 26 December 2015 in C.C. No. 933 of 2011 for offences under Sections 279 and 304A of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, and under Section 134 read with Section 187 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988. He was sentenced to four months' simple imprisonment for Section 279 IPC and six months' simple imprisonment for Section 304A IPC.

The VII Additional District and Sessions Judge, Belagavi, sitting at Chikodi, dismissed Criminal Appeal No. 12 of 2016, confirming the trial court's conviction and sentence. Khalifa then approached the High Court of Karnataka, Dharwad Bench, by filing Criminal Revision Petition No. 100222 of 2018 under Section 397 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973. By order dated 25 March 2025, the High Court partly allowed the revision. It maintained the conviction but set aside the four-month sentence for Section 279 IPC on the ground that the doctrine of merger applied and a separate sentence under Section 279 could not stand alongside the sentence under Section 304A. The six-month sentence under Section 304A was maintained.

Khalifa challenged that order before the Supreme Court. Leave was granted, and the matter was heard as Criminal Appeal No. 2902 of 2026, arising out of SLP (Crl.) No. 573 of 2026.

The Conductor's Testimony and What It Established

The prosecution's case rested primarily on PW1 (the complainant) and PW4 (Housabai, Shobha's mother), both of whom testified that the driver moved the bus while Shobha was still getting down. PW5, Popat Ramachandra Patil, who was riding a motorcycle behind the bus, corroborated that the bus had stopped near Mallayya Temple and started moving when Shobha was alighting. The trial court and the appellate court relied on these three witnesses to conclude that starting the vehicle before a passenger could safely disembark constituted rash and negligent driving.

The Supreme Court, however, focused on a witness the courts below had not adequately weighed: PW6, Kalludeppa Muthappa Batakurki, the conductor of the bus in question. His examination-in-chief, as extracted in the judgment, stated: “after the passengers got down from the bus, I have told to the accused to move the bus.” This portion of PW6's evidence remained intact in cross-examination. He denied, when suggested, that it was the driver's negligence that caused Shobha's fall.

The Court found this testimony unequivocal. The conductor had whistled to stop the bus; the driver stopped. After passengers alighted, the conductor signalled again to move; the driver moved. It was only after the bus restarted that screaming was heard. The Court held that this sequence, established through the conductor's own evidence, fundamentally undermined the prosecution's case against the driver.

Why the Driver Could Not Be Held Negligent

Justice N.V. Anjaria, writing the judgment, reasoned that in a passenger bus, the conductor is the person in charge of regulating the bus's movement. The driver concentrates on driving; the conductor signals when to stop and when to start. A driver who follows the conductor's whistle is discharging a duty, not acting recklessly.

The Court held that the driver was not expected to turn his head to verify personally whether every passenger had alighted. His reliance on the conductor's signal was described as “a normal and natural conduct.” Holding otherwise would be both unreasonable and illogical in the facts of the case.

The Court then examined the legal standards for culpable negligence and rashness. It drew on Ravi Kapur v State of Rajasthan, (2012) 9 SCC 284, which had held that negligence and rashness, to be punishable under Section 304A IPC, must be attributable to a state of mind involving deliberation — a conscious risking of the crime and of another's life. The Court found that element absent here. The driver acted on the conductor's instructions in good faith. There was no deliberation, no disregard of a known risk, and no basis to characterise his conduct as culpable rashness or culpable negligence.

The Court also addressed recklessness, which it described as a higher degree of carelessness — acting heedless of possible harmful consequences, with no prior thought given to the act. Since the driver's movement of the bus was preceded by the conductor's whistle, and the driver consciously heeded that signal, the Court held that recklessness was equally inapplicable. Nor, the Court said, was this a case of res ipsa loquitur.

The Court further cited State of Karnataka v Satish, (1998) 8 SCC 493, for the proposition that rashness or negligence cannot be presumptive; they must be assessed from the attendant facts, circumstances, and evidence in each case.

The Role of Common Sense in Appreciating Evidence

The judgment devoted a passage to the role of common sense as a canon for appreciating evidence, particularly in criminal cases involving everyday human conduct. The Court observed that law, when applied to a given set of facts, often reduces to common sense. Applying that standard here, the Court concluded that a bus driver who moves the bus on the conductor's signal, in the ordinary course of bus operations, cannot be said to have acted without due care.

The Court found that the evidence did not establish that the driver's negligence caused Shobha's fall. It left open the possibility that she may have slipped while alighting due to her own movement being less than careful. The driver, in any view, was entitled to be exonerated.

The Court characterised the concurrent findings of the trial court, the appellate court, and the High Court as a “concurrent manifest error” in convicting and sentencing the appellant.

Order

The Supreme Court set aside the impugned order dated 25 March 2025 of the High Court of Karnataka, Dharwad Bench, in Criminal Revision Petition No. 100222 of 2018. The conviction of Mohammad Hanif Jainum Khalifa for offences under Sections 279 and 304A IPC was set aside. He was held not guilty and acquitted of both offences. The Court directed that he be released forthwith if still in custody, provided his detention was not required in connection with any other offence. The appeal was allowed. Any pending interlocutory applications were held not to survive in view of the disposal of the main appeal.