Porsche crash: Court grants bail to teen’s father, grandfather in family driver’s kidnapping case

PUNE: A Pune court on Tuesday granted bail to the father and the grandfather of the juvenile involved in the Porsche car crash, in a case pertaining to alleged kidnapping and wrongful confinement of their family driver after the fatal accident in May.

A Judicial Magistrate (First Class) granted bail to the 17-year-old boy’s father Vishal Agarwal, a prominent builder, and his grandfather, who were arrested in May-end and are currently in judicial custody.

While Agarwal, who was arrested on Tuesday by police of the adjoining Pimpri-Chinchwad township in a separate cheating case, would remain behind bars, the teen’s grandfather is likely to step out of jail.

According to police, the teen’s father and the grandfather allegedly kidnapped their family driver after he left a police station on May 19 at 11 pm, hours after the crash, wrongfully confined him at their bungalow and tried to force him to admit that he, and not the juvenile, was behind the wheels when the accident took place.

A Porsche car driven by the 17-year-old boy allegedly in a drunken state fatally knocked down two motorbike-borne software engineers in Pune’s Kalyani Nagar area in the early hours of May 19.

Defence lawyer Prashant Patil informed the media that his clients were granted bail by the court in the alleged kidnapping and wrongful confinement case of the driver.

“My clients will cooperate with the investigative agency and shall abide by stringent (bail) conditions of the court,” Patil said.

Patil, in his argument on the bail plea of the father-son duo, had told the court that the driver, after leaving the Yerawada police station on May 19, chose to go to the servant’s quarter at the Agarwals’ bungalow as per his own wish and stayed there till the next day when his wife and son came and took him home.

Patil had refuted the prosecution claim that the driver was kidnapped and confined in the house of the accused.

The defence lawyer argued that when the accident took place, the teen’s grandfather was in Delhi.

“Since the registration of the offence against the juvenile, his grandfather was with police and there was no scope for him to kidnap the driver,” he submitted.

Last month, a court granted bail to Agarwal, arrested on May 21, in a case pertaining to the Juvenile Justice Act. The builder was booked under relevant sections of the Motor Vehicles Act (MVA) and the Juvenile Justice Act (JJA) for failing to do his duty as a guardian’.

On June 25, the Bombay High Court directed that the boy be released from an observation home, saying the Juvenile Justice Board’s (JJB) order on his detention was illegal.

After the accident, the boy was detained but granted bail the same day by the JJB. It also asked the boy to write a 300-word essay on road safety.

As the quick bail on lenient terms led to public outrage, the police filed an application before the JJB, seeking amendment of the bail order. On May 22, the board ordered that the boy to be taken into custody and sent to the observation home.

The minor boy’s mother, two doctors of the government-run Sassoon General Hospital and three others are in judicial custody in the blood samples swapping case linked to the accident. This case related to the replacement of the juvenile’s blood samples with that of his mother to show he was not drunk at the time of the crash.

Meanwhile, trouble mounted for the teen’s builder-father as he was arrested by the Pimpri Chinchwad police in Pune district in a case of cheating related to one of his real estate projects.

Police took Agarwal’s custody from the Pune jail where he was lodged, and produced him before a court which remanded him in fresh police custody for two days, said an official.

Vishal Adsul, chairman of Nancy Brahma Residency, a project constructed by Agarwal’s firm in the Bavdhan area, had filed a complaint against him and four others earlier this year.

A case was registered against them under Indian Penal Code sections 420 (cheating), 409 (criminal breach of trust) and provisions of the Maharashtra Ownership Flats Act. The construction firm allegedly did not provide enough open space to the project and gave only one open space to three buildings by altering the plans, and also did not take the housing society’s permission while constructing two 11-storied building on its land, a police official said. (PTI)