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A Right to Information (RTI) response received on December 1, 2025 has revealed that 217 good samaritans have been rewarded under the Good Samaritan Scheme (renamed) launched by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways on October 3, 2021.

Bihar has the maximum number of such awardees, with 95 people. Rajasthan has had 34 beneficiaries of the scheme, while 30 were in Gujarat, 22 in Jharkhand, 12 in Himachal Pradesh, 10 in Nagaland, three each in Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu and Tripura and one each from Jammu and Kashmir and Assam.

Good Samaritans – people who save the life of a victim of a deadly accident involving a motor vehicle by providing immediate assistance and rushing the injured to a hospital or trauma centre within a short time period, referred to as the “golden hour”, to receive medical treatment – are entitled to monetary benefits under this scheme.

The Union government currently provides Rs 25,000 to beneficiaries. Earlier, good samaritans received only Rs 5,000, but the amount was raised in January 2025.

However, the total number of good samaritans awarded and recognised – just 217 since the scheme’s inception – under the scheme is small considering the alarmingly high number of road accident fatalities in the country.

The RTI response from the ministry of road transport and highways for people awarded as good samaritans.

This is also reflected in the response of Nitin Jairam Gadkari, Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways, in the Rajya Sabha on December 10, 2025.

The data revealed that the number of road accidents and resulting fatalities grew in India between 2020 and 2024. In 2020, there were 3,72,181 road accidents, which increased........

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