From correspondents in Delhi, India, 10:31 PM IST

Almost 10 years after an inebriated Sanjeev Nanda, grandson of former navy chief Admiral S.M. Nanda, crushed to death six people, including three policemen, under his BMW car, a city court Friday awarded him five years' rigorous imprisonment.

While passing the sentence, Additional Sessions Judge Vinod Kumar commented on Nanda's educational background and his exposure to Western culture, saying: 'Sanjeev Nanda was already exposed to Western culture where drunken driving is taboo, and if someone indulges in it the consequences are very harsh.'

'A person who had got a driving licence from the USA can be considered to be having a higher degree of knowledge of consequences of drunken driving. Therefore, on account of his young age, no benefit can be given to him.'

This is one of the first instances that a court has convicted the accused in a hit-and-run case under Section 304 (2) (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the Indian Penal Code. In most cases, the conviction is under Section 304 (1) - causing death by rash and negligent act - in which the maximum sentence is two years' jail.

A regular Page 3 celeb, Nanda did spend a few months in jail but was released on bail in May 1999.

The judge also said this case was graver than that of Mumbai's Alister Anthony Pareira, who had run over seven people.

"If the present (BMW) case is compared with Pareira's case, it would be found that this case is much more grave than the latter case as in this Sanjeev Nanda was found with presence of ethyl alcohol to the extent of 0.115 percent in his blood whereas Pareira was found to contain 0.112 percent of ethyl alcohol, which was on the lower end of harsher sentence," the judge noted in his eight-page sentence order.

On Sep 6 last year, the Bombay High Court had sentenced Pareira to three years in prison and a fine of Rs.500,000 for running over and killing seven people sleeping on the footpath in Mumbai.

'In Pareira's case people were sleeping on the footpath, whereas in the BMW case people were standing on the road, which meant the convict was in a position to clearly see them on the road. Pareira's car stopped at the spot, whereas Nanda checked the car under which the injured were entangled and were crying and thereafter again drove away the car, so this case require the sentence on the higher end,' the judge said.

Nanda, 30, was taken to Tihar Jail soon after the sentence was pronounced.

'The question is whether a man on the road is safe and whether the drunken drivers would keep on committing such offences. This accountability to the society can only be suitably answered if a substantial jail term is provided to him, though it would not be appropriate to award him a lighter sentence,' the judge further added.

Businessman Rajiv Gupta, who was found guilty of destroying evidence, was given one year imprisonment and a fine of Rs.10,000.

His two domestic helps Bhola Nath and Shyam Singh, also held guilty of destroying evidence by washing the blood stains from the car after the accident, were sentenced to six months in jail and fined Rs.100 each. All three were given bail soon after the ruling on a surety of Rs.10,000 each.

Nanda's counsel Prem Kumar said: "This is a harsher punishment and we will appeal in the high court against it after going through the copy of the judgement."

He said his client had already paid Rs.6.5 million as compensation to the next of kin of the dead and the injured.

But the family of one of the six people killed in the accident greeted the news of the conviction with scepticism.

"We are not satisfied with the quantum of punishment given to Sanjeev Nanda. He is a rich man and will be exonerated once the case comes up for hearing in the Delhi High Court," said Naveen Kumar, 15, the son of Peru Lal, one of the victims. Naveen was five when his father, a policeman, was killed under the wheels of the BMW on Jan 10, 1999.

"Nanda will face no problems even if he languishes for some time in jail. He has money to buy all the comforts while in jail," Kumar told IANS in his small house in Madangir, south Delhi.

Nanda's grandmother, Sumitra Nanda, who sat by herself in the packed courtroom while the rest of her family huddled together, said: "It's too harsh a punishment'.

Sanjeev Nanda was returning from a party in Gurgaon, the upcoming suburb of the national capital, with his friends Manik Kapoor and Siddharth Gupta in his luxury car in the wee hours of Jan 10, 1999, when he drove it over six people in south Delhi's Lodhi Colony area.

The accident hit the headlines as a case of the rich recklessly playing with the lives of the poor as it involved the high profile business family of the Nandas.

Sanjeev, son of arms dealer Suresh Nanda, is a British national. He studied in Modern School, Delhi, and was a management student from Wharton, one of the finest B schools in the US.

Social activist Prince Singhal, who has been running a campaign against drunken driving for the last seven years, said it was an exemplary verdict and would definitely instil respect and fear of law in the common man.

Every year 90,000 people are killed in road accidents in India.

(Staff Writer, © IANS)