Treat those who drink and drive as criminals.

The Supreme Court's landmark ruling to uphold the Bombay High Court's decision to try a case of drunken driving with fatal consequences as one of culpable homicide is as much welcome as it has been long overdue. On Thursday, a three-member Bench of the apex court, hearing the case of Alister Anthony Pereira, upheld the High Court's sentencing of the accused under the harsher provision of Section 304 of the Indian Penal Code to three years in prison and observed that such crimes really deserved the maximum sentence prescribed of 10 years for culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

After all, a thoroughly drunk Pereira had run over five migrant workers and two children who were sleeping on a pavement in Mumbai on November 12, 2006. On April 13, 2007, Pereira was convicted by a lower court of causing death by a rash and negligent act under Section 304A, and awarded the maximum sentence of six months in jail and fined Rs 5 lakh. The huge public outcry that followed prompted the Bombay High Court to take up the case, which then convicted Pereira of culpable homicide and awarded him three years of incarceration.

It was an unprecedented ruling that changed the fundamental interpretation of a crime — death caused by drunken driving became culpable homicide. For the first time in the history of India's criminal justice system, it has now been made clear that those who drive under the influence of alcohol do so in the full knowledge of its dangerous consequences and hence are indeed responsible for any untoward incident that may take place.

Up until this point, all cases of death due to drunken driving had been tried on the assumption that, since the accused was drunk and not in control of his or her actions, he or she did not have the requisite mens rea or the intent to kill. By that lopsided logic, those guilty of causing death and injury due to drunken driving got away with insignificant punishment.

Now that the Supreme Court has effectively demolished that defence, those who choose to drink and drive will also be held fully accountable for their actions. Indeed, there is a long list of such people — some of them hailing from influential families who have gone free on bail within hours of snuffing out lives through their drunken driving — who deserve to be tried for a crime no different from that of cold-blooded murder.

It will be interesting to see whether the numerous cases of deaths caused by drunken driving pending before courts across the country, with some in the Supreme Court, will be treated with the harshness that the apex court has suggested. Only when people behind such deaths are made to pay for their crime will their examples become effective deterrents for others who now do not think twice before taking to their killer wheels.