The Pune city police plan to appeal to the Supreme Court against a Bombay High Court order that called for the release of a minor boy from an observation home accused in the Porsche car accident case, sources reported on Monday. A division bench of Justices Bharti Dangre and Manjusha Deshpande of the High Court ordered the immediate release of the minor boy on June 25.
The incident involved the deaths of two IT engineers, Aneesh Awadhiya and Ashwini Koshta, who were 24-year-old belonged to Madhya Pradesh. They were killed on May 19 at Pune’s Kalyani Nagar junction around 2:30 am, allegedly by a 17-and-a-half-year-old boy driving a Porsche while intoxicated.
An FIR was lodged against the minor on the same day at Yerwada police station. The police requested the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) to place the boy in an observation home and try him as an adult, but the JJB initially granted him bail under conditions, including writing a 300-word essay on road accidents.
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Later, on May 22, after the public outcry, the JJB sent him to an observation home until June 5 and the remand was extended on June 12.
The paternal aunt of the boy appealed to the High Court, arguing through advocate Swapnil Ambure that the Juvenile Justice Act of 2015 was being violated by keeping him in an observation home, which could potentially turn him into a hardened criminal. She contended that the boy should not have been removed from his grandfather's custody.
The plea asserted that it was completely in contravention of the law. The High Court on June 25 ordered the release of the minor and allowed a "habeas corpus" plea filed by his aunt seeking revoke of remand orders that would send him to the observation home.
The court directed that he be handed over into the care of his paternal aunt after observing that the custody order was illegal and passed without jurisdiction. Subsequently, the minor was released from the observation home.
A senior officer confirmed that the Pune city police would move the Supreme Court against the High Court order in the coming days.
Police's Final Report
The police submitted a “final report” against the minor boy to the JJB on June 18, within the mandatory one-month period. This report includes evidence supporting the police’s request to try the minor as an adult, detailing events from May 18 to the accident at Kalyani Nagar on May 19, and information of CCTV footage obtained from the residence of the minor boy, and also from the two hotels where he had allegedly consumed liquor.
Statements from a driver and a co-passenger who was in the Porsche at the time of the accident—friends of the minor—are included in the report. According to the police, it also includes statements from the minor's friends who attended the party at the hotels with him and enjoyed food and drinks before the accident.
The investigation also disclosed that the minor’s blood sample was swapped with his mother's at Sassoon Hospital after the accident. The police have arrested the parents of the boy, two doctors from Sassoon Hospital, and a Class IV employee involved in the sample swap, all of whom are now in judicial custody.
In this instance, the police had also taken Makandar and Gaikwad into custody. At a hotel in Kalyani Nagar, Makandar allegedly stole Rs 4 lakh from the minor's father and gave it to the Sassoon employees so they could change the blood samples.
