NEW DELHI, June 2: Pune builder Vishal Agarwal and his wife Shivani, the parents of the minor drunk driver of Porsche that killed two budding techies in their twenties, were presented before a special holiday court on Sunday amid allegations that the family tried to cover-up the deadly accident by their son. The court granted police custody of the parents till June 5.
Pune police had argued for a seven-day custody of Shivani Agarwal to probe who was given actual sample and syringe in the hospital to swap blood sample of the accused with his mother’s. Ms Agarwal is accused of swapping her blood sample with that of her 17-year-old son at Sassoon General Hospital in Pune. The need for a blood sample was part of a police investigation to ascertain alcohol content in the teenager’s blood. She was arrested on June 1 and both the parents are charged with destroying evidence. Mr Agarwal is also accused of wrongful confinement of their driver.
The teenager’s parents were produced in the court with heavy police presence. The Public Prosecutor argued that their custody was required to find out who the mastermind of the crime, who attempted and managed to destroy the evidence in an attempt to secure a clean chit for the underage driver.
Another point presented was, from where they managed to arrange for ₹3 lakh to handover to the doctors. In the days to come, Agarwal residence is likely to be searched as part of investigating the case. Despite the defence lawyer’s argument that the police already had got sufficient time to investigate, the Magistrate remanded the duo to police custody till June 5.
Pune police said that they want to cross-examine the doctors with the parents, and also collect CCTV footage. The 17-year-old boy, in an inebriated condition, drove his Porsche car and fatally knocked down two IT professionals travelling on a motorbike in Kalyani Nagar area of Maharashtra’s Pune city on May 19.
The police have registered three separate cases in the matter. The cases include an FIR in connection with the accident and the second one against the bar that allegedly served liquor to the juvenile. With the arrest of Shivani on Saturday, the police so far have arrested four of Agarwal family members, the teenager who caused the accident, his grandfather Surendra, and both his parents — Shivani and Vishal.
Police have booked the boy’s father for allowing him to drive the car without a valid license. A third case is about the wrongful confinement and coercion of the family driver to take the blame for the accident.
After being arrested on Saturday afternoon, the mother of the Porsche car’s minor driver reportedly told the police that the doctors at Sassoon hospital told her to give her blood as sample instead of her son’s. “We have recorded the statement of the woman (49). She told us that the doctors of the hospital had told her to give her blood as sample instead of her son’s. She feigned ignorance on why the doctors told her so,” Pune commissioner of police (CP) Amitesh Kumar said.
The 17-year-old accused was interrogated for an hour on Saturday, from 11:30 am to 12:30 pm. The teenager reportedly told the police that as he was drunk at the time of the accident he could not remember anything.
Amid the murky case of the Dr Ajay Tawade having changed the teen’s blood sample with his mother’s, a fresh charge has come to light against the Sassoon hospital doctor accused in the matter. A retired customs commissioner has reportedly alleged the same doctor had earlier manipulated the gender test report of his daughter-in-law in a marital dispute five years ago.
The retired official claimed that the doctor had played a role in fudging the gender test report of his estranged daughter-in-law. 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.
(Manas Dasgupta)
