The Mahabaleshwar Municipal Corporation in Maharashtra on Saturday razed portions of the MPG Club, a resort owned by the family of the 17-year-old boy who killed two people by allegedly driving his car over their motorcycle in Pune on May 19, reported PTI.
The crash took place when the minor, reportedly from the family of a prominent Pune realtor, was driving a Porsche car at high speed while under the influence of alcohol. He was booked for culpable homicide not amounting to murder and has been remanded to an observation home till June 12.
On Saturday, 12 unauthorised rooms of the resort in Mahabaleshwar were demolished after an order was passed, Satara District Collector Jitendra Dudi told the Hindustan Times. “On Saturday morning itself, the Mahabaleshwar Municipal Corporation implemented the order to demolish unauthorised construction,” Dudi said.
In recent years, there has been a growing trend of civic authorities in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states demolishing ostensibly illegal properties belonging to those accused of a crime. There are no provisions in law that provide for demolishing property as a punitive measure.
The administration had sealed the resort last week. This came after Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s visit in the last week of May to his native village in Jawali tehsil of Satara. Shinde had ordered the district collector to investigate allegations that the MPG club had been operating without requisite clearances, the Hindustan Times reported.
On June 1, the Pune Police arrested the mother of the 17-year-old boy for allegedly swapping her son’s blood sample with her own. On May 28, the police had said they found that doctors at the Sassoon General Hospital had manipulated the minor’s blood samples collected after accident. They said the blood sample of another person was taken and sent to the forensic lab to check for alcohol content.
The minor’s father and grandfather are also in police custody.
The police arrested the father of the 17-year-old on May 21 under the Motor Vehicles Act for letting his son drive a car and under the Juvenile Justice Act for wilful neglect of a minor.
On May 25, his grandfather was arrested for allegedly abducting and wrongfully confining the family’s driver in an attempt to force him to claim that he was driving the Porsche when the crash happened. The minor’s father has also been booked in the matter, registered based on a first information report filed by the driver.
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