Pune: Police on Monday night arrested an aviation spares company owner and a jeweller, who is also into real estate business, in the Porsche Taycan crash case for their alleged role in the manipulation of blood alcohol tests of two minors who were accompanying the 17-year-old driver at the time of the accident. Assistant commissioner of police (crime) Ganesh Ingale and his team on Tuesday produced the duo before special judge UM Mudholkar who ordered their police custody till Aug 26. While the case against the teenage driver is pending before the Juvenile Justice Board, the total number of arrests have reached nine — all accused of conspiracy and bribery to swap blood samples of the minors with those of others.
Two young software engineers were killed after the high-end car hit their bike at Kalyaninagar around 2.30am on May 19. The 17-year-old, son of a city-based builder, was returning home at Wadgaon Sheri along with his two friends, also minors in the rear seats, and his family driver after partying with a group of friends at two pubs in Mundhwa to celebrate the completion of their Standard XII board exam.
The aviation spares company owner is father of one of the two minors in the rear seats while the jeweller-cum-realtor is the friend of a labour contractor whose son was the other accompanying minor. The police are looking for the labour contractor on the charge of conspiracy. Pune police commissioner Amitesh Kumar told TOI, "The arrested duo are part of a criminal conspiracy to manipulate the blood alcohol tests.
We arrested them after their involvement came to light." After the arrest of two doctors and a mortuary staffer of Sassoon General Hospital on May 27, the police had recorded statements of hospital staffers and found that blood samples of two minors were also taken along with that of the underage driver's to ascertain if they were in an inebriated condition, additional commissioner of police (crime) Shailesh Balkawade said. "We started corroborating this information and suspected that the blood samples of the other two minors too may have been changed.
" "Last week, we summoned the two minors to the hospital and got their blood samples collected again. They were sent to the Regional Forensic Sciences Laboratory (RFSL) along with the samples collected on May 19. The RFSL gave its report to us two days ago, confirming that the blood samples were of different individuals.
Based on this, we arrested the persons who gave their blood samples for a swap," Balkawade said. Prior to the duo's arrest, the police had arrested the teenage driver's parents, Sassoon hospital's head of forensic sciences department Dr Ajay Taware, casualty medical officer Dr Shrihari Halnor, mortuary staffer Atul Ghatkamble (all three now suspended), and two middlemen, Ashfaque Makandar and Amar Gaikwad, who aided contact between the 17-year-old's father and the doctors to manipulate the blood test. Barring Ghatkamble, the remaining six people have applied for regular bail.
The special court on Tuesday deferred to Aug 22 its order on their bail pleas. About the duo, judge Mudholkar said section 467 (forgery) and 120-b (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code were prima facie applicable to secure police remand and their complicity in the crime had emerged after the chargesheet was filed. The allegations of manipulating blood alcohol tests against the duo were such that unless they were sent in custodial remand, effective investigation could not be carried out, the judge said.
Special prosecutor Shishir Hiray argued that the duo's questioning was essential to collect evidence relating to the conspiracy to alter the blood alcohol test reports of two minor boys. The police needed time to identify the persons at whose behest the manipulation was done, what monetary benefits were involved, and if any person other than the two doctors and the mortuary staffer, was involved, he said. Similarly, the police needed to find the cell phones of the accused to analyse call detail records, he added.
Defence lawyers Abid Mulani, Dhvani Shah and Seoul Shah said the chargesheet did not show involvement of their clients in tampering with evidence. The two minor boys have not been named as accused in the case. The charges relating to forgery and destruction of evidence were not applicable to the duo.
Their clients did not make any communication with the teenage driver's father and had so far cooperated with the police, the lawyers said. ACP Ingale told the court the two accused had fled to Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Goa and Delhi, prior to their arrest. They were identified irrespective of their relations.
CCTV footage and the forensic laboratory report proved their involvement, the police officer said. MSID:: 112656114 413 |.
