The grandfather of the 17-year-old, whose late-night drunken drive in a Porsche, left two 24-year-old techies dead in Pune, had told the family driver to take the blame for the accident and threatened him against speaking about the matter to anyone.
In his statement to police, the 42-year-old driver has said that soon after the incident, he received a call from the teen’s grandfather. “He first called me up and shouted at me over the phone. Then, he forcibly took me to their bungalow in their BMW car,” the driver has said. The teen’s father and his grandfather snatched his mobile phone, he has said. The driver was confined to the bungalow. “I was told to take the blame. He told me, ‘If you talk to anyone about this, remember…’,” the driver has said.
The teen’s grandfather has now been arrested under charges of wrongful confinement, kidnapping and criminal intimidation.
Pune Police Commissioner Amitesh Kumar told the media that the driver was promised a cash reward if he told the police that he was behind the wheel at the time of the accident. “Pressure was created on him. After the accident, the driver was questioned at the police station. When the questioning was over, he wanted to go home, but he (the teen’s grandfather) forcibly took him to their home, snatched his phone and confined him,” the top cop said.
The teen driver, said to be speeding at 200 km per hour after drinking heavily, has been sent to an observation home till June 5 as the Juvenile Justice Board considers the police plea for permission to try him as an adult. The teen’s father, a prominent realtor, has been arrested under sections of the Juvenile Justice Act.
Two engineers — Ashwini Kostha and Anish Awadhiya — were on the bike when the Porsche hit their bike from behind. They died on the spot. The boy was granted bail within 15 hours of the accident on conditions seen as flimsy. He was asked to write a 300-word essay on road accidents, told to work with traffic cops for 15 days and seek counselling for his drinking habit.
Amid nationwide outrage, the Juvenile Justice Board later modified the order and sent him to the observation home.
As allegations emerged that the influential family had tried to bend legal processes to shield the teen, an underworld link came to the fore.
The teen’s grandfather is an accused in an attempt to murder case in connection with a 2009 attack on a Shiv Sena corporator.
According to the CBI chargesheet filed in the case, the boy’s grandfather was locked in a property dispute with his brother and had allegedly contacted Chhota Rajan to mediate. The gangster got in touch with Sena corporator Ajay Bhosale, who knew the brother. But Mr Bhosale was busy with the Assembly polls and refused to intervene. The boy’s grandfather suspected that the Sena leader was backing his brother and allegedly asked Chhota Rajan to bump him off, the CBI chargesheet said. Mr Bhosale’s car was fired at near Pune’s Koregaon Park, but the bullet missed him and hit his driver instead, injuring him.
Mr Bhosale, now with the Eknath Shinde-led Sena, has told NDTV that his ‘supari’ was given by the builder, who is not being named because the accused in the Porsche case is a minor. The grandfather was also listed as an accused in the chargesheet, but not arrested. The attempt to murder case is now part of a bunch of cases against Chhota Rajan pending before a Mumbai CBI court.
