Pune Porsche crash: MLA’s late-night visit, delay in alcohol test raise questions
Less than an hour after the incident, local MLA Sunil Tingre received a call from the teen’s father, and arrived at the police station where he had been taken. Tingre insisted this was not to pressure the police.
MLA Sunil Tingre and the Porsche car found without number plate, in Pune. (Photo: PTI)
An MLA who landed up at the police station past 3 am, a blood alcohol test conducted more than eight hours later, and allegations of leniency by the Juvenile Justice Board — as the death of two youths in the Pune Porsche accident draws national attention, questions are emerging on whether there were attempts to shield the accused.
Aneesh Awadhiya and Ashwani Koshta, engineers working in Pune’s Kalyani Nagar area, were killed after a speeding Porsche allegedly being driven by a 17-year-old knocked down their motorcycle around 2.30 am on Sunday. The accused’s father is a prominent realtor in Pune.
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Less than an hour after the incident, local MLA Sunil Tingre received a call from the teen’s father, and arrived at the police station where he had been taken. Tingre insisted this was not to pressure the police.
“You can check my call records… I have not made any call to a police officer or politician to make the case weak against the accused. My political opponents are trying to spread canards to defame me,” he told The Indian Express.
Tingre said that on Sunday, his personal assistant and he received a call from the teen’s father at 3.20 am. “He told me his son was involved in an accident and a crowd was beating him up… I rushed to the spot, but the boy had already been taken to Yerawada police station. I went there, but the inspector was not present. He came after more than an hour. There was a lot of crowd present outside,” he said.
Tingre said the inspector told him the boy was involved in an accident that claimed two lives. “After he told me the severity of the case, I told him to act as per the law. When I came out, I met his father and told him about the accident. The boy’s father also learnt about the deaths after reaching the police station. I left around 6 am,” he said.
He also denied allegations that he offered pizza and water to the boy: “I did not meet the boy nor did I have a word with him… How can I offer him pizza?”
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Tingre said that after leaving the police station, he called the teen’s father and also met police officials in the evening to get an update about the case. “By that time, the case had already been decided. Where is the question of my influencing the case?… If I had any such intention, I could have protected him and not allowed his name to come out,” he said.
The Pune police meanwhile faced criticism that they had deliberately failed to file a watertight case, which helped the accused walk out on bail on conditions like having to do social work for 15 days and write an essay.
While the accident took place around 2.30 am and the teen was caught by the crowd immediately, the police conducted the blood sample test at 11 am — more than eight hours later.
When contacted, Pune Police Commissioner Amitesh Kumar said, “After the accident, the police team was busy handling the situation and the crowd. But yes, there was a delay in conducting the blood sample test. The boy was taken to Sassoon hospital around 9 am and the sample was collected around 11 am. We are trying to find out the reason behind the delay.”
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B G Kolse-Patil, a retired Bombay High Court judge, said the delay in conducting the blood sample test “means toning down the case against the accused”. “In eight hours, the alcohol passes away through the urine and the report will obviously come negative, working in favour of the accused,” he said.
The police chief also said that immediately after the accident, Section 304(A) (causing death by negligence) of the IPC was filed against the accused. “Later, after gathering full information about the severity of the accident, we upgraded the FIR and filed a complaint under Section 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder). And the same was mentioned in the remand application moved before the JJB on Sunday,” he said.
On Sunday, too, Kumar had denied allegations that the police acted under pressure. “There is no question of any pressure. We have filed the most serious offence against the accused which we could have filed.”
Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.
Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives.
Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees.
During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa.
Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.
Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More
