Six people, including the parents of a young driver, were denied bail by a municipal court in Pune on Thursday in relation to the suspected tampering of evidence in the Kalyaninagar Porsche car collision case.
The defendants were harshly reprimanded by the court for their plot to exchange blood samples and keep the underage driver out of trouble.
The minor driver’s parents, Vishal and Shivani, as well as two doctors from Sassoon Hospital, Dr. Shrihari Halnor and Dr. Ajay Taware, who are accused of facilitating the illegal blood sample swap and Ashpak Makandar and Amar Gaikwad, who are accused of serving as middlemen in the transaction, had their applications denied by Additional District Judge UM Mudholkar.
According to Judge Mudholkar, granting bail to the accused would send the “wrong message to society” and would obstruct the pursuit of justice in the matter.
“Even before the splashes of blood lying on the road of the victims/occupants of the motorcycle could get dried, the tampering with the evidence commenced and even concluded to a large extent, with the help of monetary influence or otherwise at odd hours of midnight,” the court remarked.
In this instance, he continued, tampering appeared to be “in the genes/DNA of modus of commission of crime.”
The lawsuit is based on a terrible event that occurred on May 19, 2024, when the minor—also known as a child in conflict with the law, or CCL—allegedly drove a Porsche at a high speed without regard for the consequences and struck and killed Anis Awadhiya and Ashwini Koshta, who were riding motorcycles.
The prosecution claims that the minor’s parents, Vishal and Shivani, gave ₹ 3 lakh to Dr. Shrihari Halnor, who took the minor’s blood samples to ascertain whether or not he had been driving while intoxicated, within hours of the collision.
According to the court decision, in order to hide the driver’s intoxication, Dr. Halnor allegedly took a sample of blood from Shivani, the minor’s mother, instead of the CCL.
“After carefully analyzing the entire material placed in the form of chargesheet, it becomes crystal clear that there is substance in the allegation that applicants Vishal and Shivani conspired with all the remaining applicants i.e. Dr. Halnor, Dr. Taware, Ashpak Makandar, and Amar Gaikwad to replace the blood sample of applicant Shivani in the place of CCL by adopting the illegal mode of offering bribe to both the doctors, and for that purpose, applicant Ashpak and Amar extended their active help,” the court order noted.
The court further emphasized that call data records (CDRs) and CCTV footage showing the accused planning the alleged crime at Sassoon Hospital in the middle of the night were among the evidence submitted.
The accused’s actions were supported by witness statements, the court noted. “In the strange hours of midnight, all of them gathered in the premises of the Sassoon Hospital and performed their particular incriminating role to achieve the target of replacing the blood sample of Shivani in the place of blood of CCL.”
The court further underlined how serious the alleged offense is and how, should the accused be granted bail, there could be tampering of the evidence.
“The grant of bail, at this stage, would certainly lead to tampering of the evidence of the material witnesses, and thereby the legal course may get thwarted, and there may be denial of legal justice to the victims, their family members, as well as society at large,” the order stated.
The defense’s claim that the accused had limited chance to tamper with electronic or documentary evidence was also rejected by the judge.
“No doubt, as rightly pointed out, the possibility of tampering with documentary and electronic evidence by the applicants may be Nil, but the same cannot be treated to be acceptable as regards the statements of several witnesses whose oral evidence in the court would be of very crucial nature,” the court said.
However, the prosecution’s comparisons of the accused parents to well-known fugitives like Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallya were rejected by the court, which said that the claims were “fanciful and hence deserve rejection.”
The bail applicants (accused) were represented by Senior Advocate Harshad Nimbalkar, Advocates Sudhir Shah, Rishikesh Ganu, and Prasad Kulkarni.
The State was represented by Special Public Prosecutor Shishir Hiray.
