Pune:

The fact that the teenager who rammed his father’s Porsche into two techies in Pune in May, killing them on the spot, was given bail and asked to write a 300-word essay on road safety had sparked national outrage. NDTV has now accessed the essay, in which the 17-year-old explains why he left the spot after the accident and stresses on the need to follow traffic rules. 

Meeting the bail conditions set by the Juvenile Justice Board on May 19, the day of the accident, the teenager handed in the essay on Wednesday. 

The boy, the son of a prominent Pune builder, had been drinking with his friends in two pubs to celebrate his Class 12 results before knocking down the scooter carrying the two 24-year-old techies – Ashwini Koshta and Anish Awadhiya – in the Porsche at a speed in excess of 150 kmph. He had then sped away.

In the essay, the 17-year-old, who was four months shy of the legal age for driving and more than seven years shy of Maharashtra’s legal age for drinking, said he left the spot because he was scared of what would happen to him and of getting into trouble with the police. This, he said, had also prevented him from going to a police station and reporting the accident. 

He wrote that, instead of fleeing after an accident, people should go to the nearest police station and report what had happened. Not doing so, he said, could land people in trouble. 

Exhorting people to help accident victims, the teenager also said everyone should follow traffic rules for their own safety and that of others. 

‘Confident And Composed’

Asked about the essay, officials said they found it ambiguous and couldn’t make out the teenager’s mental state. They also said that while he was in the remand home, his behaviour was like someone who was older than he is and remained confident and composed even after the arrest of his parents and grandfather. 

On the day of the accident, the teenager was taken to the Yerawada police station, where he was allegedly given VIP treatment and even given pizzas and burgers. Sunil Tingre, an MLA from the Ajit Pawar faction of the NCP, had also reached the police station, allegedly to ask police officials to go easy on him.

A murky saga began after that, with the boy’s family allegedly trying to pin the crime on a driver and bribing doctors to get the teenager’s blood samples exchanged before the blood alcohol test. The boy had got bail the same day, only to be sent to a remand home following national outrage. 

In late June, his detention was declared illegal by the Bombay High Court, which ordered his immediate release. 

After the High Court order, Ashwini Koshta’s mother Mamta had said, “I was shocked after seeing the news. I have full faith in the judiciary. They must have made the decision after careful consideration. However, I request the judges to understand the pain of a mother who has lost her daughter. Punishment should be given accordingly so that the public can trust the judicial system.”

Jabalpur:

The Bombay High Court’s decision to order the release of the minor boy allegedly involved in the Porsche car crash has stirred strong emotions with the mother of one of the accident victims urging the judges to understand the pain of a bereaved mother who has lost her daughter.

Ashwini Koshta and her friend Anish Awadhiya, both IT professionals from Madhya Pradesh, were killed in the early hours of May 19 when the luxury car, allegedly driven by the teen who police suspect was driving drunk, collided with their two-wheeler in Kalyani Nagar area of Pune.

The division bench of Justices Bharti Dangre and Manjusha Deshpande of the Bombay High Court on Tuesday ordered the immediate release of the juvenile from an observation home noting that the Juvenile Justice Board’s remand orders were illegal and passed without jurisdiction.

“I was shocked after seeing the news. I have full faith in the judiciary. They must have made the decision after careful consideration. However, I request the judges to understand the pain of a mother who has lost her daughter. Punishment should be given accordingly so that the public can trust the judicial system,” said Mamta Koshta, mother of the victim Ashwini Koshta.

She recalled the Maharashtra government has assured them that justice will be served.

“I don’t know what is in the law. My only request to the judges is to understand the pain of a mother who has lost her daughter. Many girls live there and such incidents should not recur. Those who commit such crimes should learn a lesson. I only request the judges to make the right decision,” she told reporters.

The high court bench noted the JJB’s remand orders were illegal and passed without jurisdiction.

“We allow the petition and order his release. The CCL (Child in Conflict with Law) shall be in the care and custody of the petitioner (paternal aunt),” the court said.

The bench said the court was bound by law, the aims and objectives of the Juvenile Justice Act and must treat him as any child in conflict with the law separately from an adult, despite the seriousness of the crime.

The order was passed on a plea filed by the 17-year-old boy’s paternal aunt, who claimed he was illegally detained and sought his immediate release.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Pune:

The Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) here on Friday allowed police to investigate the minor allegedly involved in the Porsche crash that left two techies dead, an official said.

The police had written to the JJB seeking permission to probe the 17-year-old, who is currently in an observation home.

“The hearing took place before the JJ board and it allowed our plea,” said Shailesh Balkawade, Additional Commissioner of Police (crime).

Police claim the teenager was driving the luxury car in an inebriated state when it hit two IT professionals on a motorbike in the city’s Kalyani Nagar area in the early hours of May 19.

Under the Juvenile Justice Act, inquiry of a minor has to be conducted in the parents’ presence.

The JJB granted bail to the teenager, son of a prominent real estate developer, a few hours after the May 19 crash and asked him to write a 300-word essay on road safety. Amid a nationwide outcry, police again approached the JJB, which modified the order and sent him to the observation home till June 5.

After the bail was given to the juvenile by a single member of the JJ Board, the Maharashtra government set up a committee to probe the conduct of the JJB members and check if norms were followed while issuing orders in the Pune car crash case.

The committee, headed by a deputy commissioner, will submit its report by next week, said Prashant Narnavare, commissioner of the Women and Child Department.

The JJB comprises a member from the judiciary and two persons appointed by the state government. The current inquiry has been set up to probe the conduct of the state-appointed members, the official said.

The minor’s father and grandfather have been arrested for allegedly wrongfully confining the family’s driver after the accident, offering him cash and gifts for taking the blame (and shielding the minor), and also threatening him.

The police have also arrested two doctors and a staffer from Sassoon General Hospital here for allegedly manipulating the teenager’s blood samples to show that he was not drunk at the time of the accident.

Police on Friday moved an application for custody of the teenager’s father in connection with the alleged switching of the blood samples. Earlier in the day, Judicial Magistrate (First Class) AA Pande remanded the real estate developer and his father (the minor’s grandfather) in judicial custody for 14 days after their police custody in the driver kidnapping case got over.

As per the police, about a dozen calls were exchanged between the juvenile’s father and Dr Ajay Taware, one of the arrested doctors, while samples were being collected for testing for alcohol consumption.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Mumbai:

A retired customs commissioner has alleged that Dr Ajay Taware, arrested in the Porsche crash case in Pune, had manipulated the gender test report of the former’s daughter-in-law in a marital dispute five years ago.

Dr Taware, head of the department of forensic medicine at Sassoon General Hospital, and two others were arrested earlier this week for allegedly swapping the blood samples of the minor accused of crashing a Porsche into a motorbike in Pune’s Kalyani Nagar and killing two persons.

Talking to PTI on Thursday, the retired official claimed that the doctor had played a role in fudging the gender test report of his estranged daughter-in-law.

He filed a complaint against Taware and others with the Medical Council of India as well as the Chief Secretary of Maharashtra but no action was taken, he said.

The customs official’s son got married in 2013, but his daughter-in-law refused to have sexual relations with her husband, he said.

When he checked her medical history and birth certificate at Aurangabad (now Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar), her birthplace, the official found that she was born a male in 1984. After ten years, the municipal corporation issued a new birth certificate mentioning her gender as female.

The daughter-in-law filed a case of dowry harassment against the family and the matter landed in a court in Andheri here.

In 2018, the court ordered a gender test of the woman. It was conducted at Sassoon Hospital in Pune, and a medical panel which included Dr Taware gave a report in February 2019 that she was “phenotypically and genotypically female”, the official said.

The test should have been conducted in Aurangabad, not in Pune, and Dr Taware manipulated the report, he claimed.

“If the car crash case gets transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation, I will submit all the evidence against Dr Taware and others,” the former commissioner said.

Notably, in 2022, the Maharashtra government had suspended the regional organ transplant authorization committee at Pune of which Dr Taware was a member, after a racket related to kidney transplant approvals came to light.

Dr Taware is currently in the custody of Pune police.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Pune:

The blood sample of the Pune teen, whose late-night Porsche dash left two young engineers dead, may have been swapped with his mother’s sample to manipulate the alcohol test report and get him off the hook.

With the investigation into the chilling crash revealing massive irregularities in the 17-year-old’s medical examination at the state-run Sassoon Hospital, Maharashtra Medical Education had appointed a three-member committee headed by Dr Pallavi Sapale, dean of Mumbai-based Grants Medical College, to look into the matter.

The panel’s report, police sources said, has revealed that blood samples of a woman and two elderly men had been collected with the intention of switching the teen accused’s sample. Police now suspect that the teen’s mother sample had been collected as part of this plan, the sources added.

Police now plan to collect samples of some suspects to get to the bottom of this, the sources said. They are looking for the teen’s mother after they did not find her home.

The teen’s mother had earlier appeared in a video message in which she had said that a viral video purportedly featuring her son was fake. She had also appealed to the police to “protect” her son and broke down on camera.

While the teen accused is at an observation home, his realtor father and grandfather have been arrested. The family, it is alleged, tried to pressure their driver into taking the blame for the accident. If the sample under probe is found to be his mother’s, it will point to the involvement of another family member in the cover-up attempt.

Aneesh Awadhiya and Ashwini Kostha, 24-year-old engineers from Madhya Pradesh, were killed when a speeding Porsche hit their bike late on May 19. The teen, alleged to be driving the car drunk, was out on bail within 15 hours on conditions widely described as flimsy — he was asked to write a 300-word essay, told to work with traffic cops for 15 days and seek treatment for his drinking habit.

Amid growing outrage, the Juvenile Justice Board modified its order and sent him to an observation home till June 5, as a decision is taken on the police plea for permission to try the teen as an adult.

The investigation later found that the blood report of the teen accused was manipulated by switching samples. Dr Ajay Taware, head of Sassoon Hospital’s forensic medicine department, chief medical officer Dr Shrihari Halnor and staff Atul Ghatkamble have been arrested in this connection. The probe has revealed that Dr Halnor and Ghatkamble received Rs 3 lakh from Dr Taware to change the blood samples, a police officer has said.

Pune:

Police investigating the Porsche car crash allegedly involving a juvenile driver are planning “digital reconstruction” of the accident scene using some latest AI-based tools and software for “evidence appreciation”, a senior police officer said on Wednesday.

He said such AI (Artificial Intelligence) tools have not yet been used for reconstructing accident scenes, though they have been effectively used in murder cases to reconstruct the body for identification.

“By leveraging these AI tools, we aim to reconstruct the entire accident and crime scene in detail. The objective is to create a comprehensive visualisation of the crime/accident scene to enhance evidence appreciation,” the officer told PTI.

The juvenile son of a city-based builder allegedly drank alcohol at a restaurant and a club before driving the car at high speed, which crashed into a motorbike in the early hours of May 19, killing two IT professionals, police had said.

The digital reconstruction involves recreating the route from the juvenile’s home to Cosie Restaurant to Blak Club in Mundhwa area, and from the Club to the accident spot in Kalyani Nagar area.

“There are some AI simulated models and core softwares wherein if CCTV camera footage, photos or spot photos are inputted, they can create some 3D image or 3D walk-through,” the officer added.

Police had collected a large volume of CCTV footage along the route taken by the juvenile, leading to the spot of the accident, which will come in handy in the digital reconstruction of the accident site.

As per the police, the juvenile, who is in the observation home, had partied in Cosie restaurant and Blak Club.

Police had arrested the minor’s father and grandfather for allegedly trying to stall the investigation.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Reacting sharply to an activist’s claims that he had called the Pune police commissioner to “pressure him” after the accident in which a 17-year-old had killed two techies in their 20s in his Porsche, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar has said he is ready to undergo a narco test to prove his innocence but asked whether the person making the allegation was ready to take ‘sanyas’ (lead a life of renunciation) if he is proven innocent. 

Activist Anjali Damania has alleged that Mr Pawar had called Pune Police Commissioner Amitesh Kumar after the Porsche accident and the deputy chief minister had, on Monday, said he had done so to ensure that the senior cop did not give in to any pressure. 

“As a people’s representative, we receive calls regarding such accidents. I had called the police commissioner and told him that the accused boy was from a wealthy family and there was a chance the police might be pressured. I told him not to succumb to any political pressure,” the NCP leader was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.

When he was asked about the activist claiming that the calls were made to favour the accused and demanding that his phone records be checked, Mr Pawar said in Marathi, “I am ready for a narco test but, if I am cleared, you (Ms Damania) should stay quiet at home and take ‘sanyas’. Is she ready for that?”

Colleagues In Dock Too

The deputy chief minister’s comments came on a day when the dean of Sassoon Hospital –  where two doctors were arrested for allegedly replacing the teenager’s blood samples to ensure that no alcohol was detected in them – claimed that a minister and an MLA from Mr Pawar’s party had written a letter asking for one of the doctors to be made the head of the forensics department. 

Dr Vinayak Kale claimed that the letter was written by Maharashtra Medical Education Minister Hasan Mushrif and MLA Sunil Tingre in favour of Dr Ajay Tawade, who was suspended as the head of the hospital’s Forensic Medicine Department on Wednesday . Mr Tingre is already in the eye of a storm for visiting the police station where the teenager was taken after the accident on May 19 to allegedly pressure officials into going easy on the case. 

Dr Kale was later sent on compulsory leave by the Maharashtra government for “failing to take the case seriously” and “not taking proper decisions” as the dean.

On May 18, the 17-year-old son of a prominent Pune realtor had gone partying – in a Rs 2.5-crore Porsche – with his friends to celebrate his Class 12 results. They went to two pubs and drank illegally, paying a bill of Rs 48,000 at one of them.

The teen then got into the Porsche with two of his friends and crashed into a scooter in Kalyani Nagar at a speed of at least 150 kmph in the early hours of May 19, killing two 24-year-old IT professionals on the spot. Aneesh Awadhiya, who was riding the bike was sent flying and hit a parked car, while Ashwini Koshta – who was riding pillion – was flung 20 feet into the air. 

The teenager had got bail the same day and was asked to write a 300-word essay as one of the conditions. Three days later, after nationwide outrage, he was sent to a remand home till June 5. 

In the first major action following outrage over alleged lapses by the police following the Pune Porsche accident, in which two techies in their 20s lost their lives, an inspector and an assistant police inspector have been suspended and the case has been transferred to the Pune Police Crime Branch.  

Police Inspector Rahul Jagdale and Assistant Police Inspector Vishwanath Todkari were suspended for not following the protocol of informing their superiors – the deputy commissioner of police on night duty in this instance – about the accident. The cops were attached to the Yerwada police station, where the teenager was taken after the accident. 

The case, which was registered at the police station, has also been taken away and assigned to the Crime Branch. 

The accident took place around 2.15 am on Sunday, when the 17-year-old, who had been drinking with his friends in two pubs in Pune to celebrate his Class 12 results, knocked down the two 24-year-old IT professionals in the Kalyani Nagar area. Aneesh Awadhiya, who was riding the bike was sent flying and hit a parked car, while Ashwini Koshta – who was riding pillion – was flung 20 feet into the air. Both of them died on the spot. 

After the pizza-burger fiasco, in which the Pune teen who rammed his Porsche into two techies was allegedly given preferential treatment by the police, more lapses on the part of the cops have come to the fore, sources have said. 

Confirming earlier claims about this, the sources have said that the medical test of the teenager, who had been drinking before the deadly accident, had been delayed. 

The crash had taken place around 2.15 am on Sunday and the teenager and his two friends had been caught by a crowd immediately. The sources said procedure dictates that an accused be taken for a medical test as soon, as possible but the teenager was escorted to a police station in Yerwada and the test did not happen until many hours later. 

Given that the 17-year-old had consumed liquor, the sources said the delay could also influence the blood alcohol level found in the test. 

The teenager, who had been drinking with his friends in two pubs in Pune to celebrate his Class 12 results, had knocked down the two IT professionals – both 24 years old – in the Kalyani Nagar area. Aneesh Awadhiya, who was riding the bike was sent flying and hit a parked car, while Ashwini Koshta – who was riding pillion – was flung 20 feet into the air. Both of them had died on the spot. 

Another lapse that has been pointed out by the sources is that the cops did not inform the central police control room, disregarding the laid-down procedure. The control room has to be informed to ensure there is a proper record of cases and senior police officials can get involved if an incident demands their attention. 

On Thursday, an investigation into the alleged negligence by the cops at the police station had been ordered, and it is being helmed by Assistant Commissioner of Police Ashwini Rakh. The scope of the probe will also include allegations that the boy, who is the son of a prominent Pune realtor, was given preferential treatment as well as pizzas and burgers at the police station. 

At 17 years and 8 months old, the teenager was four months short of the legal age for driving and more than seven years younger than Maharashtra’s legal age for drinking. He has been sent to a remand home till June 5.  

Pune:

The mother of the 17-year-old boy who allegedly fatally knocked down two persons with his high-end Porsche car has appealed to the police to “protect” her son after a video purportedly featuring him, boasting about how he got away with the accident, went viral.

In a video message, the teen’s mother stressed that the clip had nothing to do with her son and that it was fake.

“The video which is being circulated is not of my son. That is a fake video. My son is in the detention centre,” says the teen’s mother in her message.

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Appealing to the police to “protect” her son, the mother breaks down, and shows her video message. Unable to gather herself, she then walks away from the camera.

A rap song purportedly featuring the teenager, boasting about how he got away with the car crash, went viral on social media, but Pune police have clarified that it was a fake account and that the teenager had no role in the video.

Later, it was found that the rap video was of a social media influencer.

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A Porsche, allegedly driven by the 17-year-old, who the police claim was drunk at the time, fatally knocked down two motorbike-borne software engineers in the city in the early hours of Sunday.

The teenager was produced before the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) which granted him bail while asking him to write a 300-word essay.

Following an outcry over quick bail and the police’s review plea, the JJB on Wednesday remanded the teen, son of real estate developer Vishal Agarwal, to the observation home till June 5.

The police have also arrested the teenager’s father in connection with the case.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)