With a new twist and turns in the Pune Porsche accident case, Pune Commissioner of Police Amitesh Kumar on Friday clarified that the city Crime Branch is indeed investigating the driver angle and efforts were made to switch driver after the crash.
Kumar also added that their case is not solely dependent on the blood report of the accused as they also have other evidence. He denied the allegation of cops offering pizza to the accused.
Speaking with the media, Kumar said, “We have the CCTV footage of him drinking liquor in the pub… The point of saying this is that our case is not alone depending on the blood report we have other evidence also. He (minor accused) was in his senses. It was not as if all of them were so drunk that they could not understand anything. They had full knowledge that due to their conduct, an incident like section 304 can happen. There is no fact about the pizza party at the police station.”
Maharashtra | On the Pune car accident case, Pune CP Amitesh Kumar says, "Effort was made to change the driver during that period…We are investigating this also…It is true that at the start the driver had said that he was driving the car…We are investigating this part also… pic.twitter.com/0ufsWHMcmY
— ANI (@ANI) May 24, 2024
“Effort was made to change the driver during that period…We are investigating this also…It is true that at the start the driver had said that he was driving the car…We are investigating this part also under whose pressure the driver made that statement we are investigating it,” Kumar said while speaking about the driver angle in the case.
The driver angle
For the uninitiated, 17-year-old Vedant Agarwal, who was allegedly drunk, killed two with his speeding Porsche car on May 19. He was released on bail in just 15 hours after the detention, however, his bail was cancelled by the Juvenile Justice Board on Wednesday after a huge public outcry.
On Thursday, the Pune Crime Branch grilled the grandfather of the accused teen with his father. Along with them, the accused teen’s driver and friend were also investigated to piece together the sequence of events on the night before the hit-and-run incident. According to ANI, all four were grilled in unison by an officer of DCP rank.
As per the information shared by Crime Branch officials to ANI that the police were bidding to make the driver a witness in the case, as on the night of the incident, after the accused left the bar with friends, the latter had asked the teen to take the passenger seat and let him drive.
Father rang driver to let the teen drive
However, the cops added that the juvenile called his father, who later rang up the driver, asking him to let his son drive the Porsche.
The teen’s father, the bar owners as well as the manager, who are currently in police custody, were being subjected to intense grilling before the term of their police custody expires today.
(The article is published under a mutual content partnership arrangement between The Free Press Journal and Connected to India)