This Time It Is A Lamborghini In Kanpur
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2026-02-09 13:13:41
About the Author
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack
View all posts by this Author
The incident that unfolded on a busy Kanpur road on February 8 cannot be dismissed as a routine traffic accident. A high-powered Lamborghini, allegedly driven at excessive speed, ploughed into pedestrians and vehicles, leaving several people injured and a crowded locality in shock. What followed was not merely the chaos of a crash site, but the emergence of a pattern that has become uncomfortably familiar whenever wealth and influence intersect with public harm.
The driver was identified as Shivam Mishra, son of KK Mishra, a tobacco trader with substantial business interests and social clout in Kanpur. The family's affluence and access to luxury vehicles are not incidental details. They matter because they shape both behaviour on the road and the institutional response after something goes wrong.
Eyewitness accounts and widely circulated videos suggested reckless driving in a congested area with little regard for pedestrian safety. Yet the immediate official response appeared tentative. Early versions of the case reportedly avoided clearly naming the driver, even though visual evidence in the public domain made identification difficult to dispute. Only after public scrutiny intensified did the official narrative begin to settle. This lag between evidence and action has become a recurring feature in such cases.
Kanpur is not an exception. A strikingly similar controversy played out in Kolkata not long ago, when the son of a well-known biryani chain owner was accused in a serious road incident. In that case too, the initial narrative shifted repeatedly. Statements were modified, responsibility was blurred, and procedural clarity emerged only after sustained public pressure. The common thread was not geography or coincidence, but the social position of the accused and the institutional hesitation that seemed to accompany it.
Across cities, the sequence is familiar. A luxury or high-performance vehicle is involved. The driver belongs to a family with money and connections. Victims come from ordinary backgrounds. The first phase is marked by confusion, incomplete documentation and cautious language. The second phase begins only when videos circulate, outrage builds and silence becomes untenable. This contrast becomes even sharper when compared with cases involving less privileged accused, where identification, arrest and charge framing tend to be swift and unambiguous.
These incidents also reopen persistent questions about regulation and enforcement. High-performance vehicles, capable of extreme speeds, are routinely driven on roads never designed for them and in conditions that demand restraint rather than bravado. In multiple cases across India, issues have arisen around age, licensing, and the casual manner in which powerful families place such vehicles in the hands of young drivers. When such lapses recur without systemic correction, they point to enforcement failures rather than individual misjudgment.
Equally troubling is how narratives evolve after the fact. What begins as reckless behaviour is reframed as misfortune. What appears as clear negligence is softened through careful wording. Families with resources are able to navigate this transition through legal advice and social influence, while victims struggle to keep their version alive beyond the news cycle. Over time, accountability becomes negotiable, and memory becomes selective.
The Kanpur case also raises broader ethical questions about social responsibility among business elites. Families that accumulate enormous wealth, particularly through industries such as tobacco that already impose public health costs, operate within a wider social contract. When members of such families appear to treat public roads as private playgrounds, and legal processes as flexible arrangements, the issue extends beyond traffic violations to civic responsibility itself.
At its core, this is a test of equality before the law. Public faith in institutions depends not on how efficiently they handle routine cases, but on how firmly they act when power is involved. When repeated incidents in Kanpur, Kolkata and elsewhere suggest that influence can delay clarity or dilute responsibility, the damage is cumulative and lasting.
Those injured in Kanpur deserve a transparent and uncompromised process. More broadly, the episode underlines the urgent need for stricter enforcement, clearer accountability and an end to the indulgence shown to reckless conduct cloaked in affluence. Without that correction, such cases will continue to surface, reinforcing the belief that on Indian roads, justice accelerates or brakes depending on who is behind the wheel.
