Leadership | When recklessness becomes a weapon

What should be learnt from the Gurugram road-rage case wherein a woman biker was pursued and struck by a car on Golf Course Road

The Gurugram Golf Course Road incident should not be dismissed as another viral road-rage story. It is a warning about what can happen when alcohol, peer influence, entitlement and poor impulse control converge behind the wheel—and when anger allegedly escalates into dangerous conduct.

Accused Kalyan Bainsla in police custody after the hit-and-run in Gurugram. (PTI)

On September 13, a woman biker, Shivani Chauhan, was reportedly pursued and struck by a car on Golf Course Road. Her action-camera footage became central to the investigation, and police reportedly added an attempt-to-murder charge. The main accused, Kalyan Bainsla, 33, and his cousin Lavnish were arrested in Rajasthan and placed in police custody, according to media reports of police statements.

SIT sources have reportedly said that Bainsla and his companions had been partying before the incident and that alcohol consumption is being examined. Whether anyone was intoxicated, and to what extent, must be determined through reliable forensic analysis and established through due legal process—not inferred from reports or allegations.

Reports have also raised questions about an apparent hand injury and alleged tampering with the vehicle’s number-plate frame. Any conclusion about deliberate tampering, its purpose or its connection to the incident must rest on admissible evidence and be tested through due process.

Are such people born—or do they become that way?

People are not born with a finished moral code. Behaviour is shaped by temperament, family, peers, education, social norms, experience and consequences. Wealth, physical strength, popularity and sporting achievement are not measures of character. Character is revealed through restraint—tolerating disagreement without aggression, refusing to drive after drinking, accepting a friend’s intervention or ending a road dispute by letting it go.

Alcohol may impair judgement, but it cannot erase responsibility. Whether it played a role in this incident must be determined by evidence and the legal process.

Families and peer groups can prevent danger before it reaches the road. Boys must learn that masculinity is not domination: being overtaken is not an insult, losing an argument is not humiliation, and a woman riding a motorcycle is not a challenge to male authority. A car is never a weapon for settling an ego dispute.

Friends can take the keys from someone who has been drinking, refuse to join a chase, discourage reckless driving and call for help. Those who encourage aggression, record it for entertainment or celebrate it as courage help turn recklessness into a group norm. Often, the first line of prevention is the friend who says, “You are not driving,” or, “This ends now.”

The case also exposes weaknesses in detecting and investigating road crimes. India needs an interconnected digital road-enforcement system linking CCTV, automatic number-plate recognition, speed and red-light cameras, drones, traffic-control rooms, police patrols and vehicle databases.

Such a system should identify vehicles, alert command centres, deploy nearby interceptors, monitor escape routes and preserve a reliable digital trail across jurisdictions. The technology exists; the challenge is interoperability while protecting evidentiary integrity and individual rights.

A vehicle should not become difficult to trace merely because it crosses a district or state boundary. Information must move as quickly as the vehicle does.

Technology, however, cannot replace accountability. Automated enforcement requires authentication, audit trails, data protection, safeguards against misuse and appropriate human oversight.

Lesson from impaired-driving enforcement

The United States offers one useful principle despite differences among its state laws: certainty of detection and consequence. Chemical testing, licence suspension, vehicle sanctions and ignition-interlock devices can make it harder for impaired drivers to evade responsibility. India need not copy that system, but the underlying lesson is broadly applicable: laws deter dangerous conduct only when people believe detection is likely and lawful consequences cannot easily be avoided.

A rule that exists only on paper is not a deterrent. Visible enforcement, careful investigation and consistent, legally established consequences are.

Prevention must begin before the police arrive

Punishment follows an incident. Prevention begins much earlier—in homes, schools, friendships, driving culture and policing systems. Families should treat self-control as a measure of success, not weakness. Friends should intervene before an intoxicated person reaches the steering wheel. Schools and communities should challenge the idea that aggression demonstrates confidence. Governments should ensure that dangerous behaviour is quickly seen, recorded, communicated and investigated lawfully.

Every major road should be digitally monitored. Vehicles linked to dangerous conduct should be traceable across jurisdictions, subject to due process and data-protection safeguards.

But surveillance alone will not solve the problem. Technology can identify and document behaviour; only culture can prevent it from being celebrated.

The real measure of strength is not wealth, physical power or popularity. It is whether a person can control himself when he has the power to hurt another.

That is the lesson this case should leave behind—without prejudging anyone’s guilt or innocence.

Strength without restraint is a risk. Technology without integration is incomplete. Law without certain and lawful enforcement loses deterrent power. And parenting without character-building is unfinished work.

(The writer, India’s first female IPS officer, is former lieutenant governor of Puducherry)