How Doctors Tried To Save Pune Porsche Crash Accused: New Revelations
Pune Police made shocking new revelations Friday in the Porsche crash case, claiming several members of the family of the accused - the teen boy who was allegedly drunk while driving the ₹ 2.5 crore electric supercar - when it ran over and killed two people, were also drunk.
The accused's father, mother, and brother were all drunk when doctors at the state-run Sassoon Hospital were bribed to swap out the accused's blood samples with theirs, the police said.
This, the cops said, was an effort to lie about alcohol levels and "save the teen".
The original plan, the cops said, was to use blood samples from the teen's father or brother. But since they were both also drunk, blood was taken from the mother, who has since been arrested, instead.
The mother had earlier appeared in a video message in which she claimed a viral video that seemed to feature her son was fake. She also appealed to the cops to "protect" him and broke down on camera.
According to eyewitnesses at the crash site, the boy was so drunk he could barely stand. But when the preliminary medical report was filed there was a 'negative' reading for blood alcohol.
Two doctors from Sassoon Hospital - Dr Ajay Taware, then leading the Forensic Medicine Department, and Dr Shrihari Halnor - have already been arrested for swapping blood samples.
A third person - Atul Ghatkamble, a hospital staffer - is also in custody. Two others - Ashpak Makandar and Amar Gaikwad, who acted as middlemen between the teen's father and the doctors to facilitate financial transactions to swap the blood samples - were arrested earlier.
Efforts to swap out blood samples were also done for the other two minors in the car, for which too Dr Taware was allegedly roped in; prosecutors have said he was to be paid ₹ 2.5 lakh.
In their case too, the plan was to use mothers' blood samples.
But there were complications as blood types for one boy and his mother didn't match, and in the other case the mother too had alcohol in her blood. This led to samples being replaced with those from two males. The father of one of the accompanying minors has also been arrested.
In each case trainee doctors ordered to draw blood were told to use dry cotton instead of cotton dipped in alcohol - as is practice - to avoid possible alcohol contamination, the police had said.
Police chief Amitesh Kumar confirmed also that local cops failed to follow protocol after the accident early on May 19. "… but then we took drastic action," he declared.
The accident occurred after the accused lost control of the Porsche and ran over a two-wheeler, killing 24-year-old software engineers Aneesh Awadhiya and Ashwini Koshta.
Hours earlier the boy and his friends - who were out 'celebrating' clearing school exams - were spotted on CCTV cameras at city pubs, where they allegedly ran up liquor bills of nearly ₹ 50,000. The licence of the bar that served them has been revoked and the premises sealed.
In the days and weeks following the horrific accident there were reports that local cops sought to give preferential treatment to the boy, who is the son of an influential real estate mogul.