Bharatiya Janata Party MP and former Bengali actor Roopa Ganguly’s son on Thursday night crashed his car into a wall of Royal Calcutta Golf Club, PTI reported. Local residents alleged that 20-year-old Akash Mukhopadhyay was in an inebriated condition. Some reports said he was arrested on charges of driving dangerously, though Ganguly claimed that he left the city on Friday morning.
His lawyer and father denied that he was drunk at the time of the accident. “There was no proof of consumption of alcohol in the medical test,” Mukhopadhyay’s lawyer Dibyendu Bhattacharya was quoted as saying by Hindustan Times. “It was a case of mechanical failure.”
His father Dhruba Mukhopadhyay said he was balanced and was speaking coherently.
He will be produced at Alipore court on Friday, the Hindustan Times reported.
“We have arrested him for rash driving and damaging properties,” PTI reported a senior officer as saying. “No casualty was reported in the accident. His blood sample has been collected to check if it was a case of drunk driving, while the car will be sent for a forensic test.”
Mukhopadhyay’s black sedan rammed into the wall at a breakneck speed and broke a portion of it. He was rescued by locals after the accident. His father who lives nearby, rushed out of the apartment on hearing the commotion, PTI reported quoting unidentified people.
“It was sheer good luck that no lives were lost,” the area councillor Archana Sengupta told Hindustan Times. “There is a bustee [hut] close to the accident spot and children play there. Locals told me that two children were playing and a few youths were chatting close by when the car crashed into the wall.”
Sengupta added that Mukhopadhyay escaped unhurt. “The front of the vehicle was completely destroyed,” she said. “Locals were enraged after the accident. They told me that he has a habit of driving very fast.”
Ganguly in a tweet tagged Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said she loves her son but “law should take its own course”. She called reports about the crash “political rubbish”.
“My son has met with an accident near my residence,” Ganguly wrote in a tweet. “I called police to take care of it with all legal implications. No favours/politics please. I love my son and will take care of him but law should take its own course. Neither do I do wrong, nor do I suffer it...”
“How funny, I spoke to him in the afternoon, discussed about his lunch and other basic things at 3pm,” she said in another tweet. “Now I get to hear such stupid comments by the media. He just left this morning by 7.50 flight. What sort of political rubbish is this.”
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