The Pune Police on Friday said it was looking into the option of booking the father of the 17-year-old boy, who crashed his car that killed two persons, for allegedly destroying evidence as he had attempted to show that the vehicle was being driven by an adult and not his son, The Indian Express reported.
The accident occurred on Sunday when the minor, reportedly from the family of a prominent city realtor, was driving a Porsche car with no number plate allegedly under the influence of alcohol. He was booked for culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
On Friday, Commissioner Amitesh Kumar told reporters the evidence collected by the investigating team confirmed that the car was being driven by the minor. Four persons were inside the car when it crashed, said Kumar.
“The probe by the Pune city police has revealed that after the accident, the father of the minor boy attempted to show that the driver of the Porsche car was not his minor son, but an adult,” Kumar said, reported The Indian Express. “We have recorded the statement of the person employed by the family for driving the Porsche car. The statement of this driver is important.”
The commissioner said that the CCTV footage recorded at the security cabin of the minor’s residence also showed that he had taken the car while leaving the house.
“Also, the statements of the eye-witnesses corroborate this technical evidence,” Kumar added.
The commissioner reiterated that the minor “was in full senses” when he committed the offence.
He added that the report of the test conducted to measure the alcohol content in the blood of the minor did not matter and that the minor knew that consuming liquor and then driving a car at high speed could kill people.
The minor’s blood samples were collected and sent to a forensic lab for testing nearly eight hours after the crash, The Indian Express reported.
On Thursday, Kumar said that the report was not important for the investigation into the case.
“In spite or despite of the blood report, our case is that he [the minor boy] was in full senses and was having knowledge that his act of consuming liquor and then driving a car at high speed in a narrow lane can cause deaths of people,” the commissioner said.
He also said that the police had not received the report yet.
“We have the CCTV footage of him drinking liquor in the pub,” Kumar said on Friday, according to the Hindustan Times. “The point of saying this is that our case is not alone depending on the blood report; we have other evidence also.”
On Sunday, the Juvenile Justice Board in Pune granted bail to the minor, directing him to write an essay on the crash and to work with the traffic police for 15 days. The bail conditions had sparked public outrage.
Subsequently, the board cancelled the bail on Wednesday and remanded him to an observation home till June 5.
The father of the minor was also sent to two-day police custody till May 24. The police had booked the father under the Motor Vehicles Act for letting his son drive a car and under the Juvenile Justice Act for wilful neglect of a minor.
The Pune Police has also booked the owner of restaurant Cosie, Naman Pralhad Bhutada, and its manager, Sachin Katkar, and two managers of restaurant Blak, Sandip Sangale and Jayesh Bonkar, for serving alcohol to the teenager.
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