Good Samaritan Scheme (Rah-Veer Scheme)

What is the Good Samaritan Scheme?

The Good Samaritan Scheme is a programme of the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways (MoRTH) that rewards people who help save the life of a road-accident victim. A "Good Samaritan" is a person who, out of goodwill and without expecting anything in return, helps an injured person by taking them to a hospital or trauma centre within the crucial golden hour, the first hour after a serious injury, when timely treatment most often saves a life.

According to MoRTH, the scheme was launched in 2021 with a cash reward of Rs 5,000 per incident and a certificate of appreciation, to encourage bystanders to step forward and help rather than walk away for fear of police or hospital harassment. In 2025 the scheme was revised and renamed the Rah-Veer Scheme, raising the per-incident reward to Rs 25,000.

Key features

• Cash reward per qualifying incident, Rs 5,000 originally, revised to Rs 25,000 under the Rah-Veer Scheme, plus a certificate of appreciation.
• An individual can be rewarded a maximum of five times a year.
• Ten outstanding Good Samaritans are additionally selected each year for a national-level award of Rs 1,00,000 each, with a trophy and certificate.
• Implemented through States and Union Territories, with district-level appraisal committees examining cases every month.

Who is eligible for the Good Samaritan reward?

A person qualifies if:

• They voluntarily helped a victim of a serious or fatal road accident.
• They took the victim to a hospital or trauma centre within the golden hour.
• Their help was of a kind that contributed to saving the victim's life.

There is no requirement to be related to the victim, and the Good Samaritan need not have witnessed the accident from the start, the point is that they helped when it mattered.

Who cannot apply / is not eligible:

• Someone who was not involved in helping the victim reach medical care.
• Cases that do not involve a serious or fatal road accident as defined in the scheme.
• A person seeking the reward as a regular income, the reward is capped at five times a year per individual, and each case is examined on its facts.

Importantly, the scheme also protects Good Samaritans: under the guidelines a person who brings an accident victim to hospital cannot be detained, forced to pay hospital charges, or compelled to disclose personal details against their will.

How much does the Good Samaritan Scheme provide?

The per-incident cash reward is the core benefit — Rs 5,000 when the scheme began, revised to Rs 25,000 under the Rah-Veer Scheme in 2025 to paid along with a certificate of appreciation. An individual may receive this reward up to five times in a year.

Separately, the ministry runs a national-level selection every year in which ten of the most exceptional Good Samaritans receive Rs 1,00,000 each, along with a trophy and a certificate, typically during the National Road Safety Month. This is the maximum single benefit under the scheme.

What documents are involved?

How to apply for and claim the Good Samaritan reward

1. Take the accident victim to the nearest hospital or trauma centre without delay. The sooner the victim reaches care within the golden hour, the better.
2. At the hospital, allow the staff to record your details as the Good Samaritan (name, address and contact); you cannot be forced to do so, but these details are what start the reward process.
3. The hospital forwards the information to the district-level appraisal committee set up under the scheme.
4. The district appraisal committee examines the case. It meets every month, and, if satisfied that a life was helped to be saved, approves the reward.
5. The cash reward is transferred to the Good Samaritan, along with a certificate of appreciation.

You do not fill an application form as such; the process starts from the hospital record, which is why letting the hospital note your details matters. Exact procedures are administered by each State and UT, so the district transport or police authority can guide you on local steps.

Help and where to check

• National Highway helpline 1033 for road-accident emergencies
• Emergency number 112 to summon police and ambulance
• District transport / police authority for the status of a Good Samaritan reward and the appraisal committee process
• Ministry of Road Transport & Highways (morth.gov.in) for the scheme guidelines

The Good Samaritan Scheme is meant to remove the fear that stops people from helping. No one who brings an accident victim to hospital can be harassed, held, or made to pay for doing the right thing.

How to check your Good Samaritan reward status

There is no online portal where a Good Samaritan logs in with an application ID, because there is no application form to begin with. The "file" that moves through the system is the hospital's record of the incident, so tracking it means following that record rather than checking a website.

1. Confirm the hospital recorded your details. This is the single most important checkpoint. If your name, address and contact were not noted by the hospital staff at the time you brought the victim in, there is nothing for the district committee to examine later. If you are unsure whether this happened, go back to the hospital's medico-legal case (MLC) desk or casualty department and ask them to confirm it on file.
2. Contact the district transport authority or district police (traffic branch). The hospital record is forwarded to a district-level appraisal committee, which usually sits under the district administration or the office that also handles road-safety cases. Since the scheme is implemented state-wise, the exact office name (District Transport Officer, RTO, or district road safety committee) varies by state; the district transport office is the right starting point in most states.
3. Ask when the committee last met. These committees are meant to examine cases every month, so if it has been more than four to six weeks since the incident with no word, that is a reasonable point to follow up, rather than assuming the case has been lost.
4. Call the National Highway helpline, 1033, for road-accident-related queries, or reach out through the state police control room if the accident was reported through them. The helpline is primarily for accident emergencies but can also point you to the right local office for a pending Good Samaritan case.
5. Check with the hospital administration if the district office has no record of your case. Occasionally the delay is at the hospital's end, in forwarding the record onward, rather than at the committee's end.
6. Watch for direct contact from the district office once the case is approved. Because the reward is transferred directly to the bank account recorded by the hospital, most Good Samaritans learn their case has been approved when the transfer is initiated or when they are contacted to confirm bank details, rather than through any status page.
7. For the national-level annual award (the Rs 1,00,000 award given to ten outstanding Good Samaritans each year), watch for announcements around National Road Safety Month, or check the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways website, morth.gov.in, where such selections are typically announced along with the ministry's official road-safety communications.

There is no SMS-based tracking or reference number issued to the Good Samaritan at the time of the incident, which is why keeping a personal note of the date, the hospital, and the victim's admission details is useful if you ever need to follow up on your own case later.

Common reasons a Good Samaritan reward is not paid

Because the process starts at the hospital and not with a form the Good Samaritan fills in, most of the reasons a reward never materialises trace back to gaps at that first step rather than paperwork mistakes by the Good Samaritan.

• The hospital never recorded the Good Samaritan's details. In the rush of an emergency admission, hospital staff sometimes focus only on the victim and skip noting who brought them in. Without this record, there is no starting point for the district committee to act on. The fix is to make sure, even briefly, that someone at the hospital notes your name and contact before you leave, or to return afterward and ask the medico-legal case desk to add it if it was missed.
• The case does not meet the "serious or fatal road accident" threshold. The scheme is designed for accidents where prompt medical help genuinely made a difference to survival, not for every minor road incident. If the victim's injuries were treated as minor or the case was not registered as a serious/fatal road accident case by the hospital, the district committee may not process it as a Good Samaritan case. There is no separate appeal form for this; it depends on how the hospital classified and recorded the incident.
• The victim was not brought within the golden hour. Timing is part of what the committee checks. If hospital records show a significant delay between the accident and admission that is not attributable to the Good Samaritan's actions, the case may not qualify. This is generally outside the Good Samaritan's control to fix after the fact, but it underlines why getting the victim to care as fast as possible matters both for the victim and for the reward.
• Bank account details could not be verified or were not provided. Since the cash reward is transferred directly to the Good Samaritan's bank account, an incomplete or incorrect account number, or a Good Samaritan who could not be reached to provide these details, will stall the transfer indefinitely. Following up with the district transport office to provide or correct bank details resolves this.
• The five-times-a-year cap has already been reached. An individual can be rewarded a maximum of five times in a year under the scheme. A genuine sixth qualifying act of help in the same year will not attract a further cash reward until the next cycle, though the act itself is no less valuable.
• The claim was made without any hospital or police record to support it, for instance, someone claiming after the fact that they helped a victim, with no note of this at the hospital and no way for the committee to verify it. Because the scheme relies on the hospital's contemporaneous record, a claim raised well after the incident with nothing to substantiate it is very difficult for a district committee to approve.
• The case fell through administrative gaps between hospital, police and the district committee, particularly where the accident was handled by a private hospital that was not aware of the reporting requirement, or where the case moved between jurisdictions (for example, the victim was later shifted to a hospital in another district). In such situations, contacting the district transport authority directly with whatever hospital documentation exists is the most reliable way to get the case looked at, since there is no online resubmission process for a case that has stalled.