Chargesheet filed against 7 accused in Pune car crash case

Pune police file 900-page chargesheet against seven accused, including parents of minor, in luxury car accident case.

Police in Pune have filed a chargesheet against seven accused in connection with the luxury car accident case, including the parents of a minor boy, who was allegedly behind the wheel, in a Pune court, more than two months after the fatal crash, an official said on Friday.

The 900-page chargesheet, submitted on Thursday in a sessions court, has excluded the 17-year-old boy, whose case is being handled separately by the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB), while the seven accused have been charged under IPC sections related to criminal conspiracy and causing disappearance of evidence, among others.

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The high-end car allegedly driven by the minor under the influence of alcohol knocked down two motorbike-borne IT professionals originally hailing from Madhya Pradesh, one of them a woman, in Pune’s Kalyani Nagar on the morning of May 19, killing them. The boy’s father is a prominent builder.

“We have filed a 900-page chargesheet against seven accused, including the parents of the minor, two doctors and a staffer from Sassoon General Hospital and two middlemen, in a Pune court on Thursday,” said Shailesh Balkawade, Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime).

The boy’s parents and two Sassoon General Hospital doctors — Ajay Taware, then head of the forensic medicine department, and Dr. Shrihari Halnor — and Atul Ghatkamble, a staffer at the Maharashtra government-run medical facility, are accused of swapping the blood samples of the minor with those of his mother after the crash.

Two other accused — Ashpak Makandar and Amar Gaikwad — acted as middlemen between the boy’s father and the doctors to facilitate financial transactions to swap the blood samples, according to the chargesheet. The voluminous police document contains statements of 50 witnesses.