Editorial direction
Kunwer Sachdev
Inverter Man of India · Solar Man of India
Founder of Su-Kam and Kunwwer.ai, and mentor at Su-vastika and several other companies — the “Inverter Man of India” and the “Solar Man of India.” On LiftInverter.com he writes as the inventor and Indian patent-holder of Emergency Rescue Device (ERD) technology; the site is owned and funded by him and applies the same published criteria to every brand. Read his story →
The problem, in plain terms
A lift free-falls. A door opens to an empty shaft. Someone dies. The family expects a clear answer to one question: who is responsible?
In India today there is no straight answer — because there is no law written specifically for lift accidents. The police register an FIR under the general negligence section of the criminal code. But who gets named? The building owner? The society committee? The maintenance contractor who signed the AMC? The inspector who certified the lift as safe? The manufacturer? In practice it is unclear, contested, and slow — and in that gap, accountability slips away.
The legal reality
What the law offers today — and why it falls short.
To be fair, India is not lawless here. Several tools apply — but notice what they have in common: none is built for the moment after a lift kills.
Criminal
BNS 106 & 125
Causing death by negligence — now up to 5 years (raised from 2 under the old IPC 304A); injury short of death up to 3 years. But it treats a lift death like any other negligence — no priority, no defined chain of responsibility.
Civil
Consumer Protection Act, 2019
A poorly maintained lift is a "deficiency in service" — victims can claim compensation against builder, society or AMC firm. But it is civil and can take years.
Regulatory
State Lift Acts + BIS
Licensing, inspection, certification (IS 14665, IS 17900). But these govern before the accident — they are about paperwork and permits, not post-death accountability.
There is no single statute that identifies every duty-holder, coordinates the agencies, and fixes a timeline for punishment and compensation.
Why it fails the victim
Five departments. No one owns the case.
When a lift kills, the case is pulled in five directions at once: the police, the state Electrical / Lift Inspectorate, the municipal authority, the Labour Department (for construction-site lifts), and the insurer. Each works in its own silo. No single body owns the case end to end.
Worse, the key evidence — the maintenance logbook, the inspection records, the AMC contract — sits with the very parties who may be liable. With responsibility diffused across owner, contractor, inspector and manufacturer, and no statutory deadline forcing the matter, criminal liability becomes negotiable in practice. This is not a claim about any individual's bad faith — it is what any system produces when the law leaves responsibility vague and the clock unstarted: delayed prosecutions, no clear punishment, and compensation that arrives years too late, if at all.
The proposal
A dedicated Lift Safety & Accountability framework.
India should make lift safety a named priority in law, not a footnote of general negligence. A central model law — or a uniform amendment across the state Lift Acts — should establish:
- A defined chain of duty-holders. Statutorily name everyone in the safety chain — owner/occupier (society/RWA), licensed maintenance/AMC contractor, installer, manufacturer, and the certifying inspector — each with a written duty of care.
- A mandatory FIR protocol. On any lift death or serious injury, the FIR records every duty-holder in the chain from day one, with liability apportioned after inquiry — so no responsible party is quietly left out at the start.
- A single nodal authority. Empower the state Lift/Electrical Inspectorate to own the investigation, immediately secure the logbooks and inspection records, coordinate the other departments, and produce a binding accident report within a fixed timeline.
- Fast-track adjudication + guaranteed interim compensation. Statutory deadlines for the report and prosecution, and mandatory lift third-party liability insurance so interim compensation reaches the family quickly — without waiting for the criminal case to conclude.
- A public accident register. Feed verified causes back into the standards — so each death makes the next lift safer.
The ask to government
The technology to make lifts safe exists. The standards exist. The inspectors exist. What is missing is a law that says — clearly, and on a clock — who answers when a lift kills. Until India writes one, every lift death will keep being treated as an ordinary accident, and every grieving family will keep asking a question the system is not built to answer.
Sources
- Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 — full text: indiacode.nic.in. Section 106 (death by negligence, 2→5 yrs): IPC 304A → BNS 106. Section 125 (endangering life / hurt): BNS 125.
- Consumer Protection Act, 2019 — lift non-maintenance as deficiency in service: LawyersClubIndia; Rashmi Handa v. Otis Elevator (2014).
- BIS lift safety standards — IS 14665 and IS 17900 (mandatory lift & escalator safety) — Bureau of Indian Standards: bis.gov.in.