Apartment societies are responsible for failing to post lifeguards at pools: Karnataka High Court

Bengaluru: Office bearers of an apartment association should implement safety measures subject to exceptions over the residents' privacy, the Karnataka High Court has said.

"If any apartment complex has a swimming pool and the said swimming pool is left unguarded without any lifeguard or without any safety measures taken, as the case would be, those apartment complexes would be doing so at their own peril,” Justice M Nagaprasanna observed, while partly allowing the petition filed by Prestige LakeSide Habitat HomeOwners Association, Gunjur, Varthur hobli, in Bengaluru.

The association's president and office bearers had challenged a charge sheet filed under IPC sections 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and 149.

The case concerned the death of a nine-year-old girl in the apartment's swimming pool on December 28, 2023. The petitioners contended that no guard would stop a child from moving around the swimming pool in any apartment complex, as it is a question of privacy.

Pointing out that the swimming pool was unattended at the time of the incident, the court said the absence of a lifeguard when children are using the pool would amount to the elected association shirking its responsibilities. It also said the association cannot say it is not responsible, especially when the incident of the kind happens.

"Therefore, it is for the members of every apartment association to protect the lives of infants, in the apartment complex, by bringing in such measures that would avoid any such mishap, so that innocent lives are not casually lost in the manner that has happened in the case at hand,” Justice Nagaprasanna said.

The court, however, said since the intention to kill or murder is absent in the instant case, only Section 304A, which deals with causing death by negligence, ought to have been invoked, and not Section 304.

The court obliterated the offence under Section 304 and directed the court concerned to try the petitioners for the offence punishable under IPC sections 304A and 149, in accordance with the law.